Some of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks have sent shockwaves through the country. With the choice of Peter Hegseth for secretary of defense, those shockwaves have been felt in the ranks of female service members. That's because Hegseth believes "we should not have women in combat roles."
But if Hegseth's beliefs stem from concerns about women's combat-effectiveness, he is misguided. Women who serve are not the problem: Congress is.
Historically, women were excluded from certain combat specialties in the U.S. military. In 2013, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta opened all combat roles to women for the first time. The move was largely a response to looming litigation that argued the Combat Exclusion Policy violated constitutional equal protection principles. The various military branches were given until 2016 to integrate units by sex.
As many familiar with the armed forces know, this made little practical difference. Women already served in on-the-ground roles under different designations, alongside formerly closed infantry and armor units. Instead, the decision was most visible in military training schools, like Ranger School and the Special Forces Qualification Course, both of which were formerly closed to women. And the change allowed women who did serve alongside combat units to receive rightful recognition with appropriate awards and recovery time.
Hegseth's principal complaint is that sex integration "hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, [and] has made fighting more complicated." But if there is lethality in numbers (which history shows there is), drawing from the entire population has made our military more lethal. The current unprecedented recruiting crisis has mostly to do with inducting men. Female recruitment, for the most part, has remained steady, outfitting 17 percent of the active-duty force.
Indeed, Hegseth's assertion about lethality stands in stark contrast to the recent news about Capt. Lacie Hester, who was awarded the Silver Star for her role in "the largest air-to-air enemy engagement in over 50 years." Women are an integral part of lethal teams, and our military success relies on training and supporting those teams, not undermining their members' contributions.
If Hegseth's focus is physical ability, which was central to many pre-repeal debates, his aim should instead be focused on Congress. Women in combat roles want to perform at the same level as their brothers-in-arms. Today, women have successfully passed almost all military training schools, subject to the same physical standards as their male counterparts. Low graduation rates attest to the maintenance of those standards. But recent, ongoing efforts to craft sex-neutral physical standards for general fitness are regularly thwarted by Congress's Armed Forces Committee.
The Army Combat Fitness Test, for example, would have established sex-neutral physical standards by occupational specialty, based on the functional needs for each role. But in an act of misguided paternalism, Congress gutted the test and re-introduced sex into the equation. A major concern? That certain elements of the test disproportionately affected the recruitment and retention of female servicemembers.
By doing this, Congress only exacerbated the issue of women's roles in combat when the debate should have been settled: women now can and do serve in these roles effectively. They can do so under sex-neutral standards.
Finally, if the goal is avoiding personnel complications, scaling back a years-long effort to integrate would achieve the opposite. Reallocating female troops would be logistically and tactically complicated and ultimately wasteful. Women would still serve alongside men, but under different labels. So, to the extent that Hegseth's concerns about dynamics between men and women factor into the equation, simply removing women from "combat units" would have little impact. Instead, continued military justice reforms like those recently geared toward gender violence are a more effective—and again, congressionally-driven—approach.
And the moment a woman is removed from her job on the basis of sex, the military opens itself up to another equal protection lawsuit like the one in 2013. As the military litigates equal protection on the basis of race, a sex discrimination lawsuit would be even more complicated this time around. Indeed, such a challenge would squarely confront significant questions about the scope of equal protection rights for uniformed servicemembers—a question that our legal system is usually loathe to address.
Ultimately, women want to serve and they want to meet the standard. Leadership—across both the executive and legislative branches—should let them.
Chandler Cole and Johanna Crisman are West Point graduates ('17 and '18, respectively) and Duke Law students ('25). Chandler is a combat veteran who led a recently integrated platoon in Syria. She was also the first female executive officer of the U.S. Army Sapper Leader Course and completed service in 2022, reaching the rank of captain. Johanna is an active-duty Army captain. She served as a Field Artillery officer and will be a judge advocate upon graduation. Together, they created the Combat Exclusion Podcast, which explores issues surrounding military sex-integration.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
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