Navy, Marine Corps Boards Keep Voting to Retain Transgender Troops Despite Pentagon Ban

Military separation boards tasked with deciding the fate of transgender service members are reaching sharply different conclusions depending on which branch convenes them, according to reporting by The New York Times that was cited by multiple outlets this week. In the Navy and Marine Corps, boards have voted to keep transgender troops in 9 of 12 cases heard since July. In the Army and Air Force, the opposite pattern has held, with boards recommending discharge in nearly every case.

What the boards decided

According to reporting examined by NIVΞCTOR, Navy and Marine Corps boards combined voted to retain transgender troops in 9 of 12 cases heard since July. Army boards, which began hearings in February, have recommended discharge in the large majority of dozens of cases but allowed 5 troops to stay. Air Force panels, which started hearings over the summer, have ordered separation in all 6 known cases.

One case cited by several outlets involves Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras, a supply and logistics specialist with a decade of service and three overseas deployments who transitioned in 2017. His board, reviewing his record in August, struck through instructions referencing his hormone therapy and instead marked him 'remains qualified,' voting to retain him. 'You have war fighters looking at war fighters,' Contreras said, according to Yahoo News. 'They see I've always done my job, I've deployed, I've mentored other Marines, followed the rules.'

Not every case went the same way. Army Major Kara Corcoran, an infantry officer with 18 years of service and two deployments to Afghanistan, was expelled in May. According to LGBTQ Nation, she said board members cut short her character witnesses and told her that her service record was not what the panel was there to decide — a characterization attributed to her and not independently verified by NIVΞCTOR.

The policy behind the boards

The boards stem from a Trump executive order, signed in January 2025, directing the military to stop allowing service by people who identify as a sex other than the one assigned at birth. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect in May 2025 while litigation continued.

Three-member separation boards were set up to provide a form of due process, but under the policy as written, evidence that a service member is transgender is itself treated as grounds for discharge. An October 2025 Pentagon memorandum, reported by the Associated Press and cited by The Advocate, went further, allowing commanders to override a board's decision to retain a transgender service member — a departure from the military's longstanding practice of treating board findings as largely final.

Why boards are deciding differently

Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer, told reporters the pattern in the Navy and Marine Corps reflects boards declining to continue what she described as an unjust process, rather than open defiance of orders. The Pentagon and the individual service branches have declined to discuss specific board decisions with reporters, according to Yahoo News.

Litigation over the underlying ban is ongoing. A federal appeals court ruled in June that currently serving transgender plaintiffs were entitled to certain protections while the case proceeds, according to The Advocate, which reported a trial in the matter is scheduled for January 4. Because board votes to retain a service member are not final and can be overturned by civilian service secretaries or, under the newer Pentagon memo, by individual commanders, favorable board outcomes do not guarantee a transgender service member will be allowed to remain in uniform.

What is still unknown

It is not publicly known how many additional transgender-identifying cases remain pending across the four branches, nor how many retention votes have since been overturned by commanders or service secretaries under the October 2025 override authority. The Pentagon has not released branch-wide statistics on separations to date.