WASHINGTON - By the time Nicolas Talbott, a second lieutenant in the US Army reserve, checked on the incoming texts buzzing on his smart watch, he found dozens of messages waiting for him. Talbott, a transgender man who took his oath of enlistment in March, instantly knew what the messages were about: President Donald Trump was about to sign his much-anticipated executive order placing restrictions on transgender members of the US armed forces.

"Well, it happened," Talbott, 31, said in an interview with Reuters. "Here we go."

And transgender service members in the military were ready. Within 15 hours of that executive order, Talbott joined five other transgender service members in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Glad Law, a LGBTQ rights advocacy group, and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR). The lawsuit alleges that the new restrictions are violating constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

The long-term aim is not just to block Trump's executive order, but to enshrine permanent protections for transgender troops, Talbott said.

"I'm living proof that trans people can be cohesive members of the United States military and I'm still in a position where I can use my voice and I can use all of the tools in my belt to stand up for other trans people," said Talbott who transitioned medically in 2012 and is due to report for duty as a military policeman this weekend.

"Ultimately what we want to do is make it so that transgender folks' eligibility to serve in the United States military is not contingent upon who holds political office at the time."

During his first term, Trump announced that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military. He didn't fully follow through with that ban. His administration froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain. 

The Pentagon said that as a matter of policy it did not comment on pending litigation. The White House referred back to Monday's (Jan 27) executive order.

While the executive order at the start of Trump's second term in the White House stopped short of an explicit ban on transgender troops in the military, advocates and Democratic lawmakers said the language suggests transgender service members are medically and morally unfit. 

"Adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle," the order reads. "A man's assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honour this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member."

It also points to hormonal or surgical requirements as a reason for disqualification, comparable to a mental illness diagnosis.  

The order gives Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth 60 days to implement changes including a ban on "invented" pronouns. 

It does not spell out how, or if, the US military would remove transgender forces since there is no requirement to identify as transgender.

New Jersey Senator Andy Kim said the order was "an insult to the bravery and service" of transgender service members. "How can we have a military that protects all Americans if it doesn't recognise and respect all Americans?" he said in a statement.

About 1.3 million active-duty personnel serve in the US military, Department of Defence data shows. While transgender rights advocates say as many as 15,000 service members are transgender, US officials say the number is in the low thousands. There is no data that tracks transgender service members by job, but they include special operators, pilots and doctors.

'Imagine every scenario and be ready'

Transgender advocates say the lawsuit is the first shot in what they predict will be a long fight.

"The strategy at the moment is (to) imagine every scenario and be ready for that," said Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at Glad Law.

Navy Commander Emily Shilling, a pilot who leads Sparta, an advocacy group for transgender troops, said transgender service members began preparing for possible restrictions in May - long before the November elections returned Trump to the White House.  

In a weekend workshop, conducted just blocks from the White House, nearly two dozen transgender service members practiced high-pressure scenarios, including combative mock interviews, to teach them how to advocate for transgender rights if there was a change in policy after the Nov 5 election. 

"(We) did not sit on our hands, and we were preparing for the worst," said Shilling, who has flown 60 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan during two decades in the military. 

Shilling said Sparta membership had grown 10 per cent since the election to 2,200 members, many of them senior enlisted members.

Paulo Batista, a navy intelligence analyst in San Diego who joined the military in 2022, said he has started to train troops to take his place in case he is forced out. 

"These guys need to be prepared to be able to go from being a new sailor to speaking to commanding leadership," Batista told Reuters.

Months of legal preparation

Legal experts and troops said they were determined not to be caught off-guard in Trump's second term in the White House.

In an early morning July 2017 series of posts on Twitter, now known as X, Trump sent lawyers scrambling after he said that the United States "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military."

After the 2024 election, nearly 100 transgender service members and those looking to join the military reached out to Levi, with Glad Law, looking to be a plaintiffs in a potential lawsuit.

Shannon Minter, with the NCLR, said litigators at his organisation started speaking with potential plaintiffs in the summer. 

While some of the plaintiffs in Tuesday's law suit have been in the military for decades, others are still in the process of enlistment.

Koda Nature, 23, from Texas, said he had been hoping to continue a family tradition of military service, and had been working with recruiters to join the Marine Corps.

"Were the prohibition on military service by transgender individuals to be implemented, Mr. Nature would be unable to enlist in the Marines and continue his family's tradition of dedicated military service," the lawsuit said.

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Source: Reuters