This story originally appeared on The Advocate.
A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to explain why testosterone treatment is being promoted as a readiness-enhancing benefit for some service members while the same hormone care is being used to justify removing transgender troops from the military.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes on Wednesday ordered the parties challenging and defending President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban to address Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s newly announced testosterone screening and treatment program as the case moves toward trial.
Reyes took judicial notice of Hegseth’s July 15 announcement that all service members 30 and older, including women, would receive annual screening for testosterone deficiency. Troops found to have low testosterone may voluntarily receive testosterone replacement therapy, known as TRT, as part of their periodic health assessments.
The judge then placed Hegseth’s program beside the language of Trump’s military ban.
That policy declares that members of the armed forces must meet high mental and physical standards “without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions.”
“The Court must assess the impact of this newly announced policy on the parties’ positions,” Reyes wrote in Talbott v. United States on Wednesday.
The same hormone, two standards
Her order places an increasingly conspicuous contradiction at the center of the litigation.
The Trump administration has argued that transgender service members may be excluded partly because they require continuing medical treatment, including hormone therapy. Hegseth, meanwhile, has announced that the military will routinely test older service members for low testosterone and provide the same hormone when doctors recommend it.
Reyes now wants the Pentagon to explain why testosterone can be treated as a tool of health and readiness for cisgender troops but as evidence of unfitness when prescribed to transgender men.
She ordered the parties to address six areas in a forthcoming briefing on discovery and summary judgment.
They must provide information about medical guidelines for routinely screening the general population for testosterone deficiency, as well as recommendations for testing people who show symptoms of low testosterone. They must also explain the medical standards for monitoring people once TRT begins.
Reyes further directed the parties to compare the medical and logistical demands of administering testosterone to transgender men with those involved in treating other service members, including cisgender people.
The judge also wants an accounting of the costs associated with screening troops who are not transgender and providing them with testosterone therapy.
Most pointedly, she ordered the Pentagon to explain “the Department’s basis for treating trans men and other service members differently” under Hegseth’s new program and the transgender military ban.
The parties may submit expert declarations addressing those questions. The order also comes as the parties are preparing for an unusually compressed run toward trial. Under the schedule proposed by the parties, discovery requests are due August 7, expert reports are due September 4, and rebuttal reports are due September 25. Discovery is expected to close October 16, with summary judgment motions due November 13 and responses due December 14.
Reyes has also moved the case beyond the original group of plaintiffs. On June 30, she certified a class of transgender service members and prospective recruits affected by the policy. That means an eventual final ruling could protect, or bind, a much broader group than the individuals who first brought the lawsuit. The court is still refining the class definition, including how it overlaps with plaintiffs in the separate Shilling case.
The Advocate has contacted attorneys at GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights, who represent the trans troops, for comment.
Hegseth’s “High-T” military
Hegseth announced the initiative in a video titled “The High-T Department of War,” presenting it as part of a broader effort to make the armed forces stronger and more lethal.
Under the program, service members 30 and older would receive annual testosterone screenings during periodic health assessments. Younger troops could request testing, and those found to have low testosterone could voluntarily receive replacement therapy when recommended by a medical provider.
“We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world, and this program delivers on that obligation,” Hegseth said.
The Pentagon has not publicly disclosed how much the initiative will cost, how many troops are expected to receive treatment or what standards doctors will use to determine who qualifies.
Related: Democratic congresswoman calls out Pete Hegseth’s ‘intense, homoerotic feelings towards men’
The administration’s case against transgender care
Trump’s executive order directing the Pentagon to remove transgender troops states that service members must meet military standards without routine treatment or special accommodations. The Pentagon policy implementing it generally disqualifies people who have a current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria, have received gender-affirming hormones, or have undergone transition-related procedures.
The administration has repeatedly portrayed that care as an expense and operational burden.
In court, government attorneys cited more than $52 million in military spending on care associated with gender dysphoria from 2015 through 2024. That figure covered nearly a decade, included treatment beyond hormone prescriptions, and amounted to an average of about $5.2 million per year.
Reyes dismissed the cost argument when she initially blocked the ban in March 2025. She compared that spending with the roughly $41 million the military spent on Viagra in 2023 alone and wrote that transgender health care, measured against the Pentagon’s enormous budget, was “not even a rounding error.”
The military ban includes a waiver process, but its requirements are so narrow that few transgender people would appear able to qualify. Applicants must generally demonstrate 36 months of stability, show that they have never attempted to transition, and agree to serve according to standards associated with their sex assigned at birth.
The government maintains that the policy is based on medical fitness rather than transgender status. Reyes has rejected that characterization, describing the ban as “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.”
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later found that the policy extended beyond people with an active medical condition. It could disqualify someone because they had experienced gender dysphoria years earlier or had socially transitioned by changing their clothing or pronouns, regardless of their present health or performance.
The appeals court also questioned whether the government had identified a legitimate military reason for excluding such people from service.
Hegseth’s testosterone program gives Reyes another way to test whether the administration’s medical explanation is being applied consistently. Testosterone prescribed to a cisgender man with clinically low levels and testosterone prescribed to a transgender man involve the same hormone. Both forms of treatment can require regular prescriptions, laboratory testing, and medical supervision.
A case moving toward the Supreme Court and trial
The order comes as the Talbott case was moving along several legal tracks at once.
On June 1, a divided D.C. Circuit panel upheld preliminary protections for the transgender service members who brought the lawsuit, finding that they were likely to succeed on their constitutional claims. The panel did not extend the same protection to transgender people seeking to enlist.
The Justice Department filed a motion July 16 asking the appeals court to prevent that ruling from taking effect while the administration seeks U.S. Supreme Court review. Government attorneys said they plan to petition the justices by August 30.
A two-week-long trial is scheduled to begin on January 4.
