NCLR and GLAD Respond to Trump’s Statements about the Transgender Military Ban

Organizations leading the legal fight against the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military service issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s false claims that allowing transgender people to serve in the military would be overly costly:

Statement by Jennifer Levi,
Director of the Transgender Rights Project at GLBTQ Legal Advocates &
Defenders (GLAD):

“The President could not be more wrong about the costs of the ban. From
a purely financial perspective, banning transgender troops is far
more costly than continuing to permit transgender individuals who can meet
the same standards as others to serve – just as the military does for all other
groups.”

Statement by Shannon Minter,
Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR):

“There is a reason the public overwhelmingly
opposes this ban. Discharging highly trained troops is costly for American
taxpayers and weakens our national security.
“The cost of barring transgender people from military service is high,
weakens the military, and undermines our national security. As explained by
military experts in a 2018
report, banning transgender troops ‘drains financial resources due to the
cost of replacing transgender personnel’ and excludes otherwise qualified
recruits, which requires the military to spend more money on recruitment at a
time when every branch is already struggling to meet its enlistment goals.
According to a 2017 estimate
by the Palm Center, the cost of replacing transgender troops could be as high
as $960 million.”

NCLR and GLAD have been at
the center of the legal fight challenging the Trump-Pence transgender military
ban since filing Doe v. Trump, the
first of four cases filed against the ban, on August 9, 2017.