All military services must pause accepting recruits with histories of gender dysphoria and halt some gender-affirming health care for transgender service members, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered in a memo revealed Monday.

The memo, which was dated Friday, was disclosed in a Monday court filing from the Trump administration as it fights a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's order to ban transgender people from serving in the military.

Hegseth's order comes after the military services issued their own patchwork of memos in recent weeks on how to handle Trump's order and provides more clarity on how the Pentagon is approaching implementation of the president's directive.

Read Next: Army, Navy Restore Webpages Highlighting Women's Service as Other Military Diversity Efforts Are Erased^[1]

"Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for service members are paused," Hegseth wrote in the memo.

A footnote in the memo specifies that the banned medical treatments are gender-affirming surgeries and "newly initiated" hormone therapy. It does not say whether troops who have been taking hormones for a while are affected.

Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the feeling of distress caused by someone's gender identity not matching their sex assigned at birth. Not all transgender people are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Late last month, Trump ordered the Pentagon to adopt a new policy^[2] on transgender military service that reflects the administration's stance that "adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life."

A day after Trump's order, the Navy^[3] became the first branch of the military to stop accepting transgender recruits, Military.com first reported^[4]. The Navy's memo made no distinction between gender dysphoria and transgender individuals, saying categorically that "applicants who self-identify as transgender are not eligible to process for enlistment at this time."

The Pentagon did not respond by publication to Military.com's request for clarification on whether, given the discrepancy between the Navy's memo and Hegseth's, transgender recruits who have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria are still eligible to serve.

While Hegseth said in his memo that service members with gender dysphoria will be "treated with dignity and respect," he also repeated the assertion in Trump's order that "expressing a false 'gender identity' divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service."

The Pentagon also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hegseth's memo in general.

As of December, 4,240 people with a gender dysphoria diagnosis were serving on active duty or in the National Guard^[5] or the reserves, a defense official told Military.com.

From 2015 to 2024, costs for gender-affirming health care, including mental health care, hormone therapy and surgery, totaled $52 million, the defense official added. That includes hormone therapy for about 3,200 troops and surgery for about 1,000.

The cost for gender-affirming medical care represents a fraction of a percent of total Defense Department medical costs. For example, in 2024 alone, the entire budget for the military health system was $60.2 billion.

Trump's order has sparked at least two lawsuits. One -- filed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, or NCLR, and GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, on behalf of six transgender service members and two recruits -- was filed the day after Trump signed his order.

The other, from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Lambda Legal on behalf of six transgender troops and one recruit, was filed last week^[6].

Filings from NCLR and GLAD for their lawsuit revealed last week that at least one active-duty transgender trainee was already in the process of being separated from the Army^[7].

In a sworn statement for the court, Miriam Perelson, who has been in basic training at Fort Jackson^[8], South Carolina, since mid-January, said she was told she would be separated after she refused to sign a form saying she had to start using male living quarters and bathrooms. For several nights while she considered the form, she was also required to sleep on a cot in an empty classroom after being removed from female quarters, she said.

In its own filing, the Trump administration denied that Perelson was in the process of being separated. But in response to NCLR and GLAD's emergency motion to prevent Perelson's separation, the administration did agree to return her to the female barracks, according to a court filing.

NCLR and GLAD have requested an injunction to prevent a ban on transgender military service from taking effect while the lawsuit plays out.

The judge in the case, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, gave the administration until Wednesday to file its response to the request for an injunction. A hearing on the injunction request is scheduled for Feb. 18.

Related: Navy Already Rejecting Transgender Recruits After Trump Order^[9]

The Army^[1] and other service branches are abandoning recruiting^[2] efforts at a prestigious Black engineering event this week, turning down access to a key pool of highly qualified potential applicants amid President Donald Trump's purge of diversity initiatives in the military.

Until this week, Army Recruiting Command had a long-standing public partnership with the Black Engineer of the Year Awards, or BEYA, an annual conference that draws students, academics and professionals in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.

The event, which takes place in Baltimore, has historically been a key venue for the Pentagon to recruit talent, including awarding Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarships and pitching military service to rising engineers. Past BEYA events have included the Army chief of staff and the defense secretary.

Read Next: Army, Navy Restore Webpages Highlighting Women's Service as Other Military Diversity Efforts Are Erased^[3]

"This is one of the most talent-dense events we do," one Army recruiter told Military.com on the condition that their name not be used. "Our footprint there has always been significant. We need the talent."

The services cited concerns that participation in the predominantly Black event could run afoul of Trump's orders and the Pentagon's intensifying push to erase diversity efforts in the military, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Jan. 31 ordered that Black History Month, Women's History Month and others were officially "dead" and that the military would no longer mark them.

"In compliance with Department of Defense and Headquarters Department of the Army guidance, U.S. Army Recruiting Command will not participate in the upcoming BEYA event," Madison Bonzo, a service spokesperson, said in a statement to Military.com. "Service members and civilians are permitted to attend this event in an unofficial/personal capacity if they choose to do so."

Officials for BEYA did not return a request for comment.

The Navy, Air Force^[4] and Space Force^[5] are also pulling out of the event and forbidding officials from attending in an official capacity or in uniform. It was unclear Monday whether the Marines were still participating.

Additional recruiting events tied to specific racial or gender groups are also likely to be scrapped, two defense officials told Military.com. That includes other conferences and career fairs with thousands of participants.

The decision to abandon the Black engineering event marks a significant shift in military recruiting strategy -- and sparked calls of discrimination.

"It's f---ing racist," one active-duty Army general told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "For the Army now, it's 'Blacks need not apply' and it breaks my heart."

While the services are pulling out of BEYA, a well-established pipeline for high-caliber STEM talent, they remain engaged with other events. Last week, the same Army recruiting unit that would have attended BEYA instead participated in a National Rifle Association-sponsored event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white gathering that recruiters acknowledge is less likely to yield high-quality applicants.

The BEYA conference has long been intertwined with the Pentagon and the defense industry amid an ongoing competition with Silicon Valley for top-shelf talent as military jobs become increasingly technical. It regularly features panels with senior military leaders and hosts various recruiting initiatives. Top sponsors include Lockheed Martin and Google.

"The U.S. military is one of the largest STEM employers in the nation, yet its critical role in driving technological innovation often goes overlooked and misunderstood by the civilian sector," a note on BEYA's website says. "BEYA works to bridge this gap by highlighting the vast STEM opportunities available within the armed forces^[6] and showcasing military leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

Beyond being a recruiting event, the services also had a significant relationship with BEYA that included its own awards ceremonies. In 2023, Gen. Randy George, the top officer in the Army, awarded now-retired Maj. Gen. Robert Edmonson II the Stars and Stripes General Officer of the Year Award, a prestigious accolade for achievements in national security.

"It's our mission to keep the United States safe from a range of 21st-century threats," former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a keynote address at the BEYA ceremony in 2023. "We're determined to continue innovating to make America more secure; that means drawing on the strengths of all people."

Army officials interviewed by Military.com, which included five recruiters, saw the move as a significant and problematic escalation in the Pentagon's rejection of diversity initiatives, which have been widely interpreted as programs that recognize women and troops with minority backgrounds, as well as gay and lesbian troops. Trump has initiated a separate effort to eliminate transgender troops from the ranks.

Hegseth, who was confirmed last month, has made rooting out diversity his top priority at the Pentagon, with the services scrambling to scrub programs, policies and even words from documents and websites. Trump, Hegseth and supporters claim that so-called "diversity, equity and inclusion," or DEI, programs have made the military weak.

Hegseth has falsely suggested the military has race- and gender-based quotas in promotions and assignments. No such policies exist, though there are loose aspirational goals^[7] in some efforts to have segments of the military ranks better resemble the general population.

Much of Hegseth's diversity rollback had centered on bureaucratic changes, such as replacing references to "gender" with "sex" in policy language and scrapping the heritage month observances, including Black History Month.

But some officials now see the move away from recruiting events as a deliberate step to reduce outreach to Black applicants.

The move also comes after the Army Band canceled a concert at George Mason University in Virginia, where it was set to play music by Janelle Monáe, a Black singer and rapper.

The Army's partnership with the Black engineering awards has historically been about talent, not race, recruiters argue. The military's growing emphasis on STEM has made events like BEYA even more critical to recruiting, particularly as services compete for skilled candidates in a shrinking pool of qualified applicants.

"The military has been selecting on merit the whole time," said Katherine Kuzminski, an expert on the military and veterans at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C. "Some people might be seeing how the civilian world has handled DEI issues and applying that view to the military, but it has frameworks in law and policy, all these interloping standards that are rigorous and always have been rigorous."

The number of Black recruits in the Army -- the largest military service by far -- has risen over the years. In 2022, Black applicants made up 24% of the Army's new enlistments, according to internal data reviewed by Military.com, while Black Americans are just 14% of the general population.

Much of the Pentagon's recruiting woes have been tied to a shrinking pool of low-quality applicants, who increasingly struggle to meet academic standards on the military's SAT-style entrance exam.

The Navy and Army, the largest services with the highest recruiting quotas, have started pre-basic training prep courses that tutor applicants to perform well enough on the test to qualify for a job and move onto basic training. Those prep courses have effectively ended the recruiting slump that has plagued the Pentagon since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Related: West Point Eliminates Student Clubs Related to Gender or Race After Trump Order^[8]