Click play to listen to this article.

The Pentagon will begin removing transgender troops from the military after the Supreme Court ruled last week that a ban could be enforced as lawsuits progress.

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from serving. As the Pentagon put the policy in place, it faced a number of legal challenges.

Navy veteran Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America, said the court's decision has left many transgender service members in Maryland in a difficult situation.

Image

"People are worried about what comes next, where they're going to live, what their health care situation is going to be, how they're going to be employed, how quickly they're going to be purged from the military," said Church. "And all of these things are also happening at the same time that they're still wearing the uniform and continuing to carry out their jobs, whether that be here or on deployment. They're taking care of our nation and they're also wondering if they're going to have a job."

In the executive order, Trump wrote that transgender people lack the "humility and selflessness" to serve in the military.

At an event last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said the military is done with pronouns.

Some estimates put the number of transgender service members at higher than 15,000, just under 1 percent of troops.

Opponents of the ban say nearly 75 percent of transgender troops have served for more than a decade, adding transgender people are twice as likely to have served in the military.

Church said that if the Pentagon wants to have a lethal and effective military, then transgender participation is necessary.

"You're looking at many, many, many years and a lot of investment that's going to be lost by the Department of Defense in the interest of bias," said Church. "Most of this policy has been continued to proved to be rooted in animus and bias, and not in actual benefits to our national security."

A Gallup poll in February found 58 percent of Americans support allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military.

That's a drop from 71 percent in 2019, largely driven by declining support among Republicans.