Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras works in supply and logistics and has deployed overseas three times. When the Pentagon tried to push him out for being transgender, three fellow service members heard his case and voted to keep him.
“You have war fighters looking at war fighters,” he told The New York Times.
He isn’t the only one. The Times reported Friday, Oct. 23, that Navy and Marine Corps separation boards voted to retain transgender service members in nine of the 12 cases the paper was able to identify. Because officials haven’t released the outcomes, reporters built the count from interviews with troops and their lawyers. The Army and Air Force look very different. Army boards have overwhelmingly recommended discharge, the Times found, and Air Force boards have done so in every known case.
How Military Separation Boards Work
A separation board is the military’s version of a hearing on whether someone should stay in. Three service members are assigned to a single case. They hear evidence about the person’s conduct, character and performance and vote on whether to recommend retention or discharge. The hearings are closed to the public, and in at least some cases spouses haven’t been allowed in either.
The Pentagon has spent the past year stacking those hearings against trans troops. An August 2025 Air Force directive told boards they must “recommend separation of the member” for anyone diagnosed with gender dysphoria. On Oct. 8, 2025, Anthony Tata, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness, signed a memo that let commanders override boards that voted to keep a trans service member, the Associated Press reported. The memo also said trans troops had to appear in uniforms matching the sex assigned to them at birth. If they didn’t, the hearing could go on without them and the board could count it against them.
At the time, Emily Starbuck Gerson of SPARTA Pride, a group that advocates for trans service members, told the AP the hearings were “already essentially being rigged with a predetermined outcome.”
The Navy and Marine results don’t settle anything yet. A board’s vote is a recommendation, and the secretary of each military branch can reverse it.
Former Air Force Lawyer: Boards Know the Order Is Wrong
Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer, gave the Times her read on what’s happening inside those rooms. “These boards are being told to do something that they know is wrong,” she said. “We are seeing them nullify a process they see as unjust.”
The Times also found that in some cases board members had crossed out instructions printed on their findings sheets.
Army Officers Who Lost Their Cases
The picture in the Army is grim. Capt. Kai Proce, 33, entered West Point at 18, deployed to Korea and the Middle East, and was last assigned back at West Point, where he mentored 125 cadets. His last commander wrote that Proce was “easily in the top 1 percent of officers I have served with in 29 years of service.” A board of three colonels voted in June to separate him, the Times reported in August.
Maj. Kara Corcoran, 40, once led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan. Her board also voted to separate her, though it recommended she keep her retirement benefits. “It was intentionally designed to hurt us,” she told the Times.
Where the Trans Military Ban Lawsuits Stand
President Donald Trump signed the executive order barring trans people from serving in January 2025, his first week back in office. In May 2025 the Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect while lawsuits continue. The Pentagon also offered payments to trans troops who agreed to leave voluntarily, and some accepted.
The main legal challenge is Talbott v. USA. On June 1, 2026, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the government from discharging the 28 trans service members who brought the case. Judge Robert Wilkins wrote that the policy appeared “driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” A district judge later certified the case as a class action covering trans troops currently in uniform, and the administration has since been seeking Supreme Court review.
The administration says the policy is about readiness, deployability, unit cohesion and cost, and its lawyers argue it targets a medical condition rather than transgender people. The Pentagon declined to comment on the Tata memo last fall, citing the litigation. The reported board recommendations do not themselves cancel the ban or guarantee continued service.
For the sailors and Marines whose boards voted to keep them, the next decision rests with their service secretaries. Everyone else is waiting on the courts.
