NEWS RELEASE
1/22/2019

Transgender Military Ban Damaging to Public Health

The Supreme Court’s decision today allowing the Trump administration to put into effect a discriminatory ban against military service by transgender people will affect the estimated 15,000 transgender individuals serving in the military and reinforce unjust and negative stereotypes. As HIV medical providers, we remain firmly opposed to this ban, as we are to any laws and policies that marginalize Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender – LGBT—individuals and have deeply harmful impacts on health and access to health services. As clinicians we have seen how discriminatory policies, as well as the bias and stigma that accompany them, drive transgender individuals from healthcare, contributing to late diagnoses, poor outcomes and often higher healthcare costs for conditions that include HIV. We urge policymakers to respond to the impacts of this policy that, already condemned by members of both parties in the House and the Senate, divides and diminishes our country and undermines our public health.