Air Force lays out process to separate transgender Airmen and Guardians

The US Air Force has issued step-by-step guidance to remove transgender service members who do not meet new DOD policy, directing boards of peers to review medical and personnel records for evidence of gender dysphoria and recommend separation when found. The process, outlined in guidance dated 12 to 14 August 2025, includes formal hearings with witnesses and documentary evidence, secret-ballot deliberations, and designation of a consolidated disposition authority to oversee cases, as reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine. Affected Airmen and Guardians are nondeployable while proceedings are pending; cadets who are transgender will be disenrolled and discharged. Advocacy group SPARTA criticized the approach as opaque and divorced from merit.

In May, DOD ordered active-duty members to self-identify by 6 June (Guard/Reserve by 7 July) to access enhanced voluntary separation benefits; with those who waited facing involuntary separation later. The Pentagon also excluded SkillBridge, the internship-to-industry transition program, for those leaving under the policy, and signaled that enlisted would receive the JFF code while officers could receive JDK—an adverse designator that may complicate postservice clearance prospects, though officials say the code alone does not revoke a clearance.

The Air Force briefly opened Temporary Early Retirement Authority (TERA) to some with fifteen to eighteen years of service, then reversed course on 4 August, denying all pending TERA requests, according to an Air Force memo confirmed by the service. Voluntary separations remain incentivized with roughly double the payout of involuntary separations.

A February estimate put diagnosed cases of gender dysphoria across the services at more than 4,200, though not all are still serving. Lawsuits challenging the policy continue, but the Supreme Court in May lifted an injunction that would have paused separations pending litigation.