A federal judge gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth three weeks to answer 10 written questions about his personal feelings and thoughts about the U.S. military’s transgender ban.
At a court hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes warned that she “has little patience” and expects the Defense Department’s top official to give straightforward answers that would shed light on any “personal animus.”
And Reyes said if she is not satisfied with Hegseth’s answers, she could force him into a one-hour deposition under oath.
The order came in a class-action lawsuit over the Trump administration’s hardline policy against transgender troops, and Hegseth’s answers could serve as evidence in an upcoming bench trial.
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The lawsuit, filed last year, has challenged the U.S. military’s renewed prohibition against transgender service members, which followed two of President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive orders decrying “false ‘gender identity’” and “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex.”
An Obama administration policy stopped the military from discharging people for being transgender in 2017. Trump reversed the policy in 2018, President Joe Biden undid that ban in 2021.
Hegseth’s attention-drawing comments are now threatening to play a central role in a lawsuit that argues the renewed ban is unconstitutional, arguing in part that it is based on animosity toward transgender people rather than the effectiveness of transgender service members.
In May 2025, Hegseth posted, “TRANS is out at the DOD.” At the Iowa State Fair in August, he used a slur when he said, “At the Department of War, we do training, not trannies.” Last week, Hegseth doubled down with a speech in which he said, “No fatties. No trannies. No beardos. No weirdos.”
His statements came up in court in Washington, D.C., when government lawyers tried to block him from facing a deposition where he would be forced to answer questions from plaintiffs’ lawyers.
“I’m very aware that he is the secretary of defense and he has a lot of constraints on his time,” the judge said. “But he has time to tweet and put out videos and speak to generals, and I think it’s fair game.”
Reyes also pointed out that Hegseth is claiming that “military readiness” would be compromised by soldiers who need gender-related medical care while simultaneously saying the U.S. government would begin testing soldiers for testosterone levels — and offer them testosterone replacement therapy to boost it.
“Secretary Hegseth issues a tweet. It was Secretary Hegseth who told his generals ‘no trannies.’ And I still haven’t mentioned that it was Secretary Hegseth that said individuals were going to get gender-affirming care ... while the policy says the military can’t handle gender-affirming care,” Reyes said at the hearing.
After a back-and-forth with attorneys on both sides, the judge decided to take a two-step approach.
Class-action attorneys have a week to come up with 10 questions for Hegseth, and the defense secretary will then have three weeks to respond in writing. Reyes warned that she would not accept “very carefully tailored lawyerly responses that would say nothing.”
If that happens, Reyes said, she would be “happy to monitor the deposition.”
In 2025, Reyes temporarily enjoined the Trump policy in a ruling that concluded that the ban “is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” but the Supreme Court allowed the U.S. to implement it as the litigation played out.
In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a split decision that paused the ban for those currently in the military but allowed it to remain in force for those wanting to join. The Trump administration in August appealed to the Supreme Court, which has not yet agreed to review the case.
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