By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has started taking steps to remove at least one transgender service member and is turning away transgender applicants looking to join the military, an emergency legal filing that seeks a temporary restraining order said on Tuesday.
Trump signed an executive order last week that took aim at transgender troops. It included a line saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
The order gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 60 days to implement changes including a ban on “invented” pronouns.
It did not spell out how, or if, the U.S. military would remove transgender forces since there is no requirement to identify as transgender.
In a personal declaration form accompanying the filing in a district court in Washington, D.C., Miriam Perelson, a 28-year-old female transgender service member based at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, alleged that she was told she must either be classified as a man or be separated from the military.
She said that over the weekend, she was required to leave the sleeping area for female troops, given a cot in an empty classroom and not allowed to use the female restrooms.
Perelson refused to sign the statement given to her by her commanding officer and was informed that she would be administratively separated, the emergency legal order said.
“Requiring Miriam, a transgender woman, to serve as a man is the same as saying she cannot serve at all, since it requires her to stop being transgender, which she cannot do because she is transgender,” the filing said.
The temporary restraining order, filed by civil rights organization GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, also said that military recruiters had halted processing transgender applicants pending Defense Department guidance.
“Urgent relief is required to prevent plaintiffs and other service members from being deprived of their careers and suffering dehumanizing treatment based solely on their transgender status,” the order said.
The groups asked the court to maintain current policies while it weighs their motion for a preliminary injunction against Trump’s executive order.
Shortly after the motion was filed, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, scheduled a Tuesday afternoon hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order.
The Pentagon said it does not comment on pending litigation, as a matter of policy.
The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, Department of Defense data show. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Nia Williams and Lisa Shumaker)
