Military review boards charged with carrying out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban on transgender troops are instead voting to keep many of them in uniform, according to new reporting from The New York Times.
Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain transgender service members in nine of the 12 cases they have considered, the Times reported. That runs directly counter to the Pentagon’s instructions.
Dave Phillips, the Times’ military correspondent, told CNN on Friday that the boards set up by the Pentagon in the Navy and Marine Corps have been working to keep transgender troops in the service despite Hegseth’s directive.
“All of a sudden, they are looking at these rules, realizing that they’re given no choice, and then they’ve been voting over and over — about three out of every four times — to keep these transgender soldiers and sailors and Marines in uniform, which is basically them quietly defying orders,” Phillips said.
He said board members appear to be weighing service records over policy. In his account, the boards are effectively saying the person in front of them is good at the job, has never broken any rules and in some cases is a highly valued member of the military.
Phillips noted, however, that the board decisions are only recommendations.
The removal effort began with a January 2025 executive order stating that a gender identity different from biological sex conflicts with the demands of military service. The Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect in May 2025. Hegseth then set deadlines for active-duty troops and reservists to leave voluntarily before involuntary separations began. About a quarter of the 4,240 service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria took a voluntary separation payment rather than face the boards.
The administration then set up three-member separation boards to handle the remaining cases under a narrow set of instructions. Critics said the outcome was all but decided. Priya Rashid, a military attorney who represents transgender service members, has called it “generally predetermined” and put the cost of convening each board at $22,000.
Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer, said the boards “are being told to do something that they know is wrong.”
The Pentagon has already moved to limit the boards’ independence. An October 2025 memo from Undersecretary Anthony Tata allows commanders to overturn a board’s decision to let a transgender service member stay, breaking with longstanding policy that boards act independently.
The pattern is not the same across the services. Phillips said the Army was the first branch to begin expelling transgender troops, and the Air Force has discharged transgender airmen more quickly without showing the same pattern of retention votes.
Hegseth has made restoring what he calls the “warrior ethos” and tougher standards central to his tenure. In a speech to Marines at Quantico, he vowed to remove transgender troops from the force. According to the Times, boards just steps from where he spoke were voting to keep transgender Marines.
