‘I’m trans and work in the military – I barely eat or drink to avoid bathroom ban’

A trans woman employed by the National Guard is suing the Trump administration for its bathroom policy, saying she is having to go without eating and drinking at work to avoid using the facilities.

LeAnne Withrow served as a soldier in the Illinois National Guard from 2010 to 2023 and was widely decorated during her time in service, receiving the Meritorious Service Medal, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal and Illinois National Guard Abraham Lincoln Medal of Freedom, amongst several others.

She joined the National Guard because she “truly wanted to give back to the United States and to my community” and said she “always wanted to serve” as she had a family history with the military.

“It was the privilege of a lifetime to be able to serve in the National Guard for 13 years and do the things that I got to do there, meet the people that I met,” she said of her work. “But really, it was about service to others, which I think is an important thing for all of us to keep in mind and something we should dedicate a little bit of our time to every day.”

Nowadays, Withrow works as a civilian employee in the State Family Programs Office, which supports those currently in service, veterans and their families with resources and referrals.

“It’s important to fight for what’s right”

Withrow came out as trans in 2016 when the ban on transgender troops serving in the US military was lifted by then-Obama administration defense secretary Ash Carter, saying at the time she felt “we were past this as a country, as an organisation”.

Despite Trump reinstating the ban a short time later during his first term in office, before it was once again lifted in 2021 by then-president Joe Biden, Withrow said she never had an issue using the female facilities at work.

However, this was no longer the case when Trump signed the gender critical executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government“, which outlined – amongst its many mandates – that it would be the policy of the US government to “recognise two sexes, male and female” and that “intimate spaces” will be based on “sex and not identity”.

Further to this, when Trump returned to office in January for his second term he once again invoked a ban on trans troops serving in the military. In the executive order, entitled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness“, he declared the armed forces has been “afflicted with radical gender ideology” and claimed trans people who express “a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service”. Withrow however, as a civilian employee, is not subject to this ban.

She told The Advocate that she now skips eating and drinking as to avoid using the toilet at work, instead just sustaining herself on a granola bar or a spoonful of peanut butter.

“I know that I have to operate within the bounds of the policies as they currently exist, and I intend to do my job well and fully. And so, in order to do that, I’m making that sacrifice,” she explained.

After filing complaints with the Army National Guard Bureau Equal Opportunity Office and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about her situation and not getting anywhere, Withrow decided to pursue legal action and filed a class-action suit against the Trump administration in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

“I think that it’s important to fight for what’s right, even if it becomes more difficult or inconvenient,” she explained, adding: “It’s a question of human dignity, it’s a question of equal treatment under the law, and I was not raised to back down from either of those things.”

Withrow went on to say that planning her day around what facilities she can, or cannot, use is taking important time and energy way from her job.

“I think that the Family Programs Office has an incredibly important task, and that’s taking care of soldiers and their families and veterans, and that mission is the thing I would like to be focusing all my attention on,” she said.

“So it’s frustrating to realise that I have to logistically plan out which bathroom am I going to be allowed to use today, where I’m at, at a given time, instead of just focusing on that mission.”

She added: “It wears on you. Imagine being a manager at a local McDonald’s and you find out that the CEO of McDonald’s personally dislikes people like you.

“It’s deeply uncomfortable and it sort of makes it feel like you’re walking on eggshells all the time because I feel the compulsion to be the model minority.”

Despite the situation, Withrow remains optimistic for the future: “I sort of, in the back of my mind, always believe that the good guy is going to win. And I think we’re the good guy in this.”