Trump Through Hegseth 🥃 Denies Early Retirement toTransgender Men/Women Wanting to Leave Before Fired
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| The move was part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights. |
Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Reporting from Washington
At least a dozen transgender men and women serving in the U.S. Air Force who had applied for early retirement to avoid being kicked out of the service for their gender identity have had their retirement approval rescinded by the service.
The airmen, all of whom have served 15 to 18 years, must now choose between a voluntary separation agreement or involuntary removal with few, if any, benefits. Either course of action will result in a substantial loss of financial, medical and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of them.
The Air Force’s decision on Wednesday to rescind its approval of early retirements for transgender men and women, which was reported earlier by Reuters, is the latest battle in President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on transgender rights.
One of the affected airmen is Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who is stationed in Oahu, Hawaii, and is represented by Shannon Minter, a lawyer and the legal director of the National Center for L.G.B.T.Q. Rights.
“It’s just mind-boggling,” Mr. Minter said in an interview. “Master Sergeant Ireland deployed to combat multiple times and is a superstar who re-enlisted earlier this year.”
During the Biden administration, Mr. Minter said, active duty service members were allowed to transition. “They followed policy. They never did anything wrong,” Mr. Minter said.
The Pentagon issued a memo in February that declared medical diagnoses of gender dysphoria to be incompatible with military service. Yet, Mr. Minter said, the decision to separate these men and women is not being handled the way any other disqualifying medical condition diagnosed during active service would be — with a medical retirement.
Typically, a member of the military is eligible for retirement benefits after accruing 20 or more years of active service. Those benefits include one half to three-quarters of their base pay as well as access to military bases, commissary rights and free medical care at military clinics and hospitals for life.
A medical retirement would offer those same kinds of benefits.
There are also so-called early retirements that are usually offered to service members who have 15 to 18 years of service. The early retirements are used to reduce the number of people in overstaffed job fields, and they offer the same kind of retirement benefits available to those who stay in uniform for 20 or more years.
According to an Air Force spokeswoman who was not authorized to speak publicly about policy decisions, approximately a dozen transgender men and women who have 15 to 18 years of service had their applications for early retirement approved, only to have that approval rescinded Wednesday after legal review.
Under the Air Force’s policy, transgender men and women must now choose between a voluntary separation package or an involuntary separation that is typically reserved for cases of misconduct.
“Calling this a voluntary separation is such an Orwellian misnomer,” Mr. Minter said.
The number of transgender men and women in uniform is believed to be 4,000 to 5,000, or about 0.2 percent of the total force. Pentagon policy now requires them to revert to the grooming standards and uniforms of their birth sex before being kicked out, but Mr. Minter said he didn’t think any were doing so.
“This whole process has been designed to inflict maximum humiliation on them,” he said. “This whole thing is based on a fiction that being transgender isn’t a real identity and that people could just toss it aside.”
Mr. Minter added, “It’s just who they are.”
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