Review boards tasked with expelling trans troops from the U.S. military aren’t performing as expected.
The boards, composed of everyday uniformed service members, are voting to keep their trans colleagues.
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It’s a remarkable rebuke up the chain of command to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has vilified trans service members as part of a “woke” cadre of “fatties,” “tr***ies,” “beardos,” and “weirdos” infiltrating the military.
Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases since their hearings started in July. The Army rejected expulsion in five cases among several dozen it has heard since February. Only the Air Force panels have voted to expel all trans service members in the six cases it has heard since meetings started over the summer.
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“These boards are being told to do something that they know is wrong – to rubber-stamp a non-choice given to them by the administration,” Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer and a professor at Southwestern Law School, told The New York Times.
“We are seeing them say they’re not going to play that game. We are seeing them nullify a process they see as unjust.”
VanLandingham has been tracking the expulsion cases in the absence of any information provided by the Pentagon – speaking to lawyers, service members called up from their regular duties to serve as jurors, and the trans service members who’ve been put before them.
The three-member “separation” boards were created to provide a veneer of due process in Hegseth and President Donald Trump’s crusade against transgender officers and troops in the military, a reboot of the same effort in Trump’s first term. Under the rules, any evidence of a service member being transgender requires dismissal.
The current ban is being litigated, but the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect as challenges make their way through lower courts.
In the meantime, trans service members who did not retire ahead of a deadline last spring are on paid leave and await their hearings and the chance to dispute their expulsion, however unlikely a favorable outcome might be.
Or so they thought.
“I was shocked at first,” Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras said of his hearing in August.
Following a government lawyer’s presentation of documents showing that Contreras transitioned in 2017, the board members reviewed his record, which included three overseas deployments and a decade of flawless service as a supply and logistics specialist.
The Marines then crossed out instructions regarding “a history of cross sex hormone therapy” and circled “remains qualified.” They voted to retain him.
“When you come down to it, it makes sense,” Contreras said. “You have war fighters looking at war fighters. They see I’ve always done my job, I’ve deployed, I’ve mentored other Marines, followed the rules. They say, ‘Hey, this is a good Marine, why wouldn’t we retain him?’”
While his Marine colleagues would, the board decisions are only recommendations. They could be reversed by the like-minded secretaries with whom Hegseth has stocked the service branches.
And scores of trans service members have been expelled in the Pentagon’s trans purge as planned.
Maj. Kara Corcoran, an infantry officer who served for 18 years and deployed to Afghanistan twice, was expelled in May. She called the Army board that heard her case a “kangaroo court.”
“They cut off my character witnesses halfway through and said, ‘We get it, your service is commendable, that’s not what we’re here to decide,’” she said. “The government lawyer, the board, they thought it was ridiculous, but I think they felt they had no choice.”
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