Despite vigorous opposition from LGBTQ military families and civil rights organizations, the U.S. Senate yesterday passed and sent the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to President Biden’s desk with a dangerous provision that discriminates against military families raising transgender youth, supporting a version of the bill that previously passed in the U.S. House.
The provision targets the dependents of active military service members and retirees by banning essential health care for transgender youth. It effectively bans nearly all forms of gender-affirming care through TRICARE, health care that is supported by every major medical association as safe, studied, and lifesaving (statements here). TRICARE is the uniformed services healthcare program for active duty service members, active duty family members, National Guard and Reserve members and their family members, retirees and retiree family members, survivors, and certain former spouses worldwide.
More than 20 Senators – led by out lesbian Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) – introduced an amendment on Monday night to remove the language, but the amendment was never brought to a vote. Several Senators voted against the bill in the final vote that included the discriminatory language, including Baldwin, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). Sen. Baldwin noted that the provision will cause harm to approximately 6,000-7,000 families raising transgender youth.
“We’re talking about parents who are serving our country in uniform, having the right to consult their family’s doctor and get the health care they want and need for their transgender children, that’s it,” Baldwin said on the Senate floor, according to the Hill. She later continued, “Some folks poisoned this bill and turned their backs on those in service and the people that we represent.”
Several LGBTQ organizations and individuals also immediately issued reactions condemning the bill’s passage.
Congress has now passed the first anti-LGBTQ federal statute in years, one that will directly harm thousands of service members and their families, and impact the security of every American family. (1/3)
— Sarah Kate Ellis (@sarahkateellis.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 4:44 PM
Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, the world’s leading LGBTQ media advocacy organization, said: “Congress has now passed the first anti-LGBTQ federal statute in years, one that will directly harm thousands of service members and their families, and impact the security of every American family. The anti-transgender, anti-family provision in the National Defense Authorization Act will baselessly distract service members from their missions and duty to worry about their own families, a situation the U.S. government should never impose on the troops who put their lives on the line. This provision does nothing to prioritize national security or military readiness. America’s military heroes, including their families, should always be assured that their safety and freedoms are respected and protected.”
GRACE, the Gender Research Advisory Council + Education, a transgender-led national nonprofit organization promoting equality, dignity, and respect for transgender individuals, expressed disappointment with the provision. GRACE founder and President Alaina Kupec, a veteran and former US Naval Intelligence Officer, said: “I know firsthand the challenges of our military families around the world. They are selflessly serving their country and defending the very freedoms that these politicians are taking away from them and their children. Our military families are being distracted from their mission in defending our Country by politicians propagating false narratives, endangering all of us who rely on their singular focus in carrying out our nation’s defense. … As a life-long Catholic, I sleep well knowing that God loves me for all of who I am, and the love and compassion I show all those around me, not just people who worship the same as me.”
Many national LGBTQ organizations are urging President Biden to veto the legislation, including the American Civil Liberties Union, PFLAG National, the National Black Justice Coalition, and others. Kristine Kippins, Deputy Legal Director for Policy at Lambda Legal, said: “It is unconscionable that both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have approved a defense spending bill that singles out and denies servicemembers the ability to obtain critical medical care for their transgender and nonbinary children who suffer from gender dysphoria. … The wrongful targeting is manifest, and we call on President Biden to veto this cruel and harmful spending bill.”
Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) Director of Federal Policy, Olivia Hunt, said: “If signed by the president, the passage of the NDAA will mark the first piece of federal legislation to restrict access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender adolescents. It would be heartbreaking for an administration that has sought to advance the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans more than any other to date, to enact a law that would endanger countless trans youth. We urge President Biden to take a strong stance for trans youth and their families and veto this bill. “
Charlotte Clymer, an out transgender woman and military veteran, said: “This is not about science or the safety of our nation’s children. It’s about the desperate stench of politics pandering to fear and discomfort toward trans people and replacing doctors and parents with uninformed and uncaring lawmakers who are all too eager to look the other way. I appreciate those Senate Democrats who fought the good fight instead of surrendering to ignorance and bigotry.”
Earlier this week, GLAAD uplifted voices of military families raising transgender youth who will be directly impacted by this legislation, many of whom have spoken out only on the condition of anonymity out of fear for their and their families’ safety.
“It is very hard for me to reconcile the idea that the country trusted me to fight in combat, to be shot at, to lead young sailors into combat, but they won’t trust me to make a medical decision for my child, which is the most important decision of my life,” said one retired Navy captain who is raising a transgender teenage son to the Washington Post. The Navy captain spent 29 years in the service and was a commanding officer of an aviation squadron.
“My spouse is active duty military,” said B., the spouse of an active duty airman and the parent of a trans child. “If these lawmakers saw him in the hallway in Congress, they would shake his hand and thank him for his service. They trust him with sensitive information, and they trust him with the security of the nation, but somehow they can’t trust him with making informed medical decisions for his own child?”
Another family impacted by the proposed language is Jane Doe and her 11-year-old daughter, Susan, who are also plaintiffs in a case challenging Florida’s ban on transgender health care led by GLAD Law. The Does are a military family who moved to Florida when John Doe was stationed there as a Senior Officer in the U.S. Navy. “The military doctors we work with understand the importance of providing that evidence-based, individualized care. We’re proud to serve our country, but we are being treated differently than other military families because of a decision by politicians in the state where we are stationed,” said Jane Doe.
GLAAD joined nearly 300 other LGBTQ and civil rights organizations in a joint sign-on letter today opposing the provision. The letter reads in part: “Military families with transgender youth have made it clear that this provision will force them to choose between their military careers and providing health care for their loved ones. At a time when the military continues to fall far short of recruitment targets, we cannot afford the cost of this harmful provision. When access to medical care is restricted, it does more than threaten the health of service members’ families: it threatens retention, morale, and readiness of our Armed Forces.”
Should President Biden sign the bill, the language inserted into the NDAA would be the first time in American history that a ban on health care for transgender Americans would become part of federal statute. It would be the first broadly anti-LGBTQ federal statute since policies such as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prohibited open service by gay, lesbian, and bisexual members of the military and was repealed more than ten years ago; and the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” banning marriages for same-sex couples from being recognized by the federal government. DOMA was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013. It was replaced with the Respect for Marriage Act, codified into law by Congress in 2022 and ensuring.full federal respect for same-sex and interracial marriages, including in hospitals across state lines, in tax and estate considerations, and in regards to all the federal protections of marriage.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti earlier this month, a case challenging Tennessee’s law banning health care such as hormone therapy and puberty-pausing medications for transgender youth under 18, while the same treatments remain available to cisgender (non-transgender) youth.
The next step will be for President Biden to either sign or veto the legislation.