All military services must pause accepting recruits with histories of gender dysphoria and halt some gender-affirming health care for transgender service members, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered in a memo revealed Monday.
The memo, which was dated Friday, was disclosed in a Monday court filing from the Trump administration as it fights a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's order to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
Hegseth's order comes after the military services issued their own patchwork of memos in recent weeks on how to handle Trump's order and provides more clarity on how the Pentagon is approaching implementation of the president's directive.
"Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for service members are paused," Hegseth wrote in the memo.
A footnote in the memo specifies that the banned medical treatments are gender-affirming surgeries and "newly initiated" hormone therapy. It does not say whether troops who have been taking hormones for a while are affected.
Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the feeling of distress caused by someone's gender identity not matching their sex assigned at birth. Not all transgender people are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Late last month, Trump ordered the Pentagon to adopt a new policy on transgender military service that reflects the administration's stance that "adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life."
A day after Trump's order, the Navy became the first branch of the military to stop accepting transgender recruits, Military.com first reported. The Navy's memo made no distinction between gender dysphoria and transgender individuals, saying categorically that "applicants who self-identify as transgender are not eligible to process for enlistment at this time."
The Pentagon did not respond by publication to Military.com's request for clarification on whether, given the discrepancy between the Navy's memo and Hegseth's, transgender recruits who have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria are still eligible to serve.
While Hegseth said in his memo that service members with gender dysphoria will be "treated with dignity and respect," he also repeated the assertion in Trump's order that "expressing a false 'gender identity' divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service."
The Pentagon also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hegseth's memo in general.
As of December, 4,240 people with a gender dysphoria diagnosis were serving on active duty or in the National Guard or the reserves, a defense official told Military.com.
From 2015 to 2024, costs for gender-affirming health care, including mental health care, hormone therapy and surgery, totaled $52 million, the defense official added. That includes hormone therapy for about 3,200 troops and surgery for about 1,000.
The cost for gender-affirming medical care represents a fraction of a percent of total Defense Department medical costs. For example, in 2024 alone, the entire budget for the military health system was $60.2 billion.
Trump's order has sparked at least two lawsuits. One -- filed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, or NCLR, and GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, on behalf of six transgender service members and two recruits -- was filed the day after Trump signed his order.
The other, from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Lambda Legal on behalf of six transgender troops and one recruit, was filed last week.
Filings from NCLR and GLAD for their lawsuit revealed last week that at least one active-duty transgender trainee was already in the process of being separated from the Army.
In a sworn statement for the court, Miriam Perelson, who has been in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, since mid-January, said she was told she would be separated after she refused to sign a form saying she had to start using male living quarters and bathrooms. For several nights while she considered the form, she was also required to sleep on a cot in an empty classroom after being removed from female quarters, she said.
In its own filing, the Trump administration denied that Perelson was in the process of being separated. But in response to NCLR and GLAD's emergency motion to prevent Perelson's separation, the administration did agree to return her to the female barracks, according to a court filing.
NCLR and GLAD have requested an injunction to prevent a ban on transgender military service from taking effect while the lawsuit plays out.
The judge in the case, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, gave the administration until Wednesday to file its response to the request for an injunction. A hearing on the injunction request is scheduled for Feb. 18.
Related: Navy Already Rejecting Transgender Recruits After Trump Order
