Trump is stripping some service members of their retirement benefits. How can this happen? What does he expect them to feed on? Read more below: 👇🏾

The move raises questions about how far the administration will go to reshape the armed forces.

When President Donald Trump returned to office in January, Master Sergeant Logan Ireland was worried about what would happen to his career.

The 38-year-old transgender Air Force member had already jumped through bureaucratic hoops to be able to serve during Trump’s first term. In 2017, Trump tweeted he wanted to ban trans people from the military; the White House formalized its policy over the next year, carving out exceptions for people like Ireland who had already begun medically transitioning. Ireland had to get a doctor’s note diagnosing him with gender dysphoria in order to keep his job.

And now, that diagnosis is being used to purge him — and thousands of other transgender service members — from the military, despite his 15 years of service, including deployments in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.

“The Air Force made me who I am,” he told HuffPost. “It helped me find my voice.”

As the Air Force has haphazardly rolled out its separation process for transgender troops, Ireland is also one of the few service members to be approved for, and then subsequently and inexplicably denied access to, early retirement benefits.

Ireland is now one of 17 transgender Air Force and Space Force members suing the United States government over what they say is an “unlawful” revocation of their early retirement benefits and pensions.

The suit, filed with the Court of Federal Claims last week, comes months after these service members, who had all served between 15 and 18 years, were told that they were eligible for Temporary Early Retirement Authority, or TERA. The program allows veterans to access their pensions and Tricare, which provides civilian health care benefits for military personnel and veterans.

Trans service members and lawyers warn that the retraction of these benefits, thus far without recourse, is an unprecedented development in Trump’s war on trans rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion more broadly— raising questions about how far the administration will go to reshape the armed forces.

‘This Has Never Happened Before’

Days after returning to office, Trump signed an executive order in which he called transgender identity a “falsehood” and claimed a diagnosis of gender dysphoria was incompatible with the military’s standards of “lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” In May, the Supreme Court gave Trump the green light to enforce his ban on transgender service members as a lawsuit brought by trans plaintiffs continued in a lower court.

Active-duty troops were given until July 7 to “self-identify” their gender dysphoria diagnosis and begin the “voluntary” separation process. If they did so, they would receive double the amount of normal separation pay and wouldn’t have to pay back any bonuses or tuition costs they’d received during their service.

But Ireland was among those who chose to pursue involuntary separation instead, hoping he could make the case before a board of his peers for why he should be allowed to stay in the service.

But then, as the avenues for transgender troops to contest their discharge began to narrow, Ireland had to contend with the crushing reality that he would have to leave the community and workplace he called home.

At the very least, Ireland thought, his 15 years of service would afford him early retirement benefits, which meant he could think about what he wanted his civilian life to look like.

In June, he applied and was approved for TERA benefits, which were slated to go into effect at the beginning of December. Over the summer, he and his wife, who is also transgender and a veteran, talked about moving from their home in Hawai’i to the continental states. Ireland began looking into jobs where he could continue supporting the military as a civilian. He planned a retirement ceremony for November, inviting every trans service member on the base he could think of to join him and his family. His parents bought plane tickets so they could attend.

“Even though it was supposed to be my retirement ceremony, I wanted [my wife and other trans service members] to be recognized because many wouldn’t have been afforded the retirement like I was,” Ireland said.

But in August, the Air Force rescinded his benefits without explanation.

The Department of Defense and the White House did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

A spokesperson for the Air Force told The Associated Press that around a dozen service members had been “prematurely notified” that they would be able to retire with their benefits before that decision was reversed.

Sgt. Master Logan Ireland (left); Ireland, his wife and their niece in Hawaii (right)
Thus far, only a small group of Air Force and Space Force members who have served at least 15 years have seen their retirement benefits revoked.

“Everyone knows it’s so hard to be in a military family, constantly getting moved around and giving up opportunities for wealth and savings and investment that other people have, but in return for that, [they] make sure you are set up with substantial retirement benefits,” said Shannon Minter, a lawyer with the National Center for LGBTQ Rights who is representing the plaintiffs. “So this is a huge loss, it’s a very substantial amount of money.”

Lawyers estimate that service members are owed between $1 million and $2 million each.

The government’s rescission of these benefits is “unprecedented,” Minter said.

“This has never happened before, and it directly violates their own policy and the underlying statute that allows the military to grant early retirement,” he told HuffPost. “Not only are they kicking people out of the military for no reason, but they seem to be going out of their way to make it as humiliating and painful and punishing as possible.”

Under the policy Minter referenced, which dates back to a section of the National Defense Authorization Act authorized by Congress in 1993, once Air Force members have received a retirement order, their benefits are essentially a done deal.

Only under rare and extraordinary circumstances, such as “fraud, mathematical error, or substantial new evidence,” such as a person being incarcerated, under investigation, or in a medical hold, can an agency revoke retirement orders.

But none of these circumstances apply to any of the service members in the case.

“I wasn’t taught how to retreat,” Ireland said. “It should be no surprise that I’m going to do everything I can for myself and others to gain the benefits we earned through our service.”

An Uncertain Future
Ireland is currently still on the military’s payroll, but he has been placed on administrative leave due to the executive order. In many ways, he is stuck in limbo: He cannot perform his job, nor can he look for new employment. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to leave the military since his December separation date has been voided.

“I can’t set myself up on the outside. I chose to be involuntarily separated, but even then, I don’t know what that process is going to look like, and it’s very difficult to land on my two feet as a civilian,” Ireland said.

Emily Starbuck Gerson, the communications director at SPARTA Pride, a nonprofit group that advocates for transgender military members, said her wife, Jamie Hash, a senior master sergeant in the Air Force, is facing similar uncertainty.

Hash, who helped shape the Air Force’s policies regarding trans service members in 2016, is just one year shy of the 15-year benchmark for TERA benefits eligibility. She, too, is on administrative leave and can’t yet accept new employment until she knows when she’ll get her separation papers. Starbuck Gerson said she relies on her wife’s Tricare access for health insurance, and the two are already researching ways for Hash to qualify for disability benefits with the Veterans Association so that they can receive some benefits.

There are about 4,200 service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria as of last December, a senior defense official told The Washington Post. As of May, around 1,000 service members came forward to voluntarily separate from the military, according to a press release from the Department of Defense.

“We don’t have an exact number of trans troops because the DoD doesn’t even have an exact number. In court hearings, they’ve admitted to not being sure exactly how many people are impacted,” Starbuck Gerson said. “What we do know is that purging thousands of troops who have served for many years and received millions of dollars in training – including aviators, linguists, and medical professionals – will waste billions of dollars and take decades to come back from.”

“Not only are they kicking people out of the military for no reason, but they seem to be going out of their way to make it as humiliating and painful and punishing as possible.”

– Shannon Minter, lawyer with the National Center for LGBTQ Rights

Transgender people have been able to serve openly in the military since 2016, when former President Barack Obama lifted a longstanding ban on trans service members following his removal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 2011, which had barred openly gay and lesbian service members.

During Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court allowed his trans military ban to go into effect, but carved out exceptions for service members who had already transitioned and did not require “substantial medical treatment” for their gender dysphoria.

But this time around, the Trump administration has gone even further, attempting to bar anyone with a history of or current gender dysphoria diagnosis. Thus far, federal judges have found in two separate lawsuits that the ban on transgender troops is unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court allowed the ban to go into effect after Trump asked the highest court to weigh in on the case known as Shilling v. United States as litigation continues. A similar case, Talbott v. Trump, will continue hearings in January.

“It feels as though the government is trying everything they can to push these patriots out onto the streets with as few benefits and as little recourse as possible,” said Starbuck Gerson. Her wife, Hash, is also a plaintiff in the Talbott case.

Advocates warn that if the court allows the government to revoke retirement benefits for the plaintiffs, it could set a dangerous precedent for how the Trump administration might get away with denying benefits to other populations.

“This is the tip of the spear. They know if they can get away with treating people who have served our country in this way, they can mistreat transgender people with impunity in other areas,” Minter said. He cautions that this could give the administration “the green light for targeting much more vulnerable transgender people like incarcerated people, homeless trans people who are being cut off from shelters, and young people who are having their health care taken away.”

If the court rules against the plaintiffs, this could open up myriad other questions about the future of retirement benefits for all troops – cisgender and transgender alike.

Ireland said these last few months have made it difficult for him to visualize what his future looks like, but he isn’t going to give up the fight for answers and equal treatment in uniform.

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