WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has issued internal instructions to the Pentagon to start kicking out transgender troops who do not elect to leave on their own by June 6, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision was immediately condemned by transgender rights activists contacted by Reuters.

“It is just shameful,” said Jennifer Levi, a senior director at the pro-LGBTQ legal group GLAD Law.

“It is senseless to fast track people out of the military who are meeting standards and putting lives on the line to defend the country.”

Hegseth’s memo illustrates how President Donald Trump’s administration intends to swiftly act to remove thousands of transgender servicemembers after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday cleared the way for a ban to take effect.

In the memo, Hegseth said active duty transgender troops could identify themselves for “voluntary separation” from the U.S. armed forces until June 6. Troops who are in the reserve forces had until July 7.

“On conclusion of the self-identification eligibility window, the Military Departments will initiate involuntary separation processes,” the memo said.

The Pentagon’s ban is just one of a series of steps the Trump administration has taken to curb transgender rights.

Trump Signed Executive Order Recognizing Only Two Sexes

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office on January 20 stating that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that they are not changeable.

But his efforts to end transgender rights in the military were a special focus on his election campaign, and he quickly moved to reverse a policy implemented under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden that had allowed transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces.

Biden, who also reversed Trump’s 2017 ban on transgender recruitment, said in 2021 that “America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride.”

Former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2016 first allowed trans people to serve openly and as of late last year, there were 4,240 U.S. active-duty and National Guard transgender troops, officials have said. Transgender rights advocates have given higher estimates.

In Thursday’s memo, Hegseth wrote that the U.S. military would immediately start removing transgender troops who had already self-identified for voluntary separation prior to a court ruling in March that halted the Trump administration’s last attempt to implement the ban.

A poll from Gallup published this in February said 58% of Americans favored allowing openly transgender individuals serving in the military, but the support had declined from 71% in 2019.

A former Fox News host, Hegseth has embraced conservative stances on culture war issues, including eliminating diversity initiatives at the Pentagon.

Speaking on Tuesday, Hegseth told a conference hosted by U.S. special operations forces: “No more pronouns, no more climate-change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses.”

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(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Leslie Adler, Chris Reese and Marguerita Choy)