Hours after the Supreme Court gave the green light to President Donald Trump's transgender military ban, Army Staff Sgt. Patricia King was not ready to give up hope.
The ban "gives a false sense of credibility to the inaccurate notion that transgender people are somehow less or less capable than our peers," King told CNN's Brooke Baldwin.
King has served in the military for 20 years, but it was not until recently that she was able to serve openly as a transgender woman.
"Transgender people have been serving in the military for as long as the United States has had a military," King said. "We've done it in silence."
"The problem is that this (ban) stops trans people from being able to bring their best self to work because they're holding something back."
The policy, first announced by the President in July 2017 via Twitter, and later officially releasedby then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis in 2018, blocks individuals who have been diagnosed with a condition known as gender dysphoria from serving with limited exceptions. It also specifies that individuals without the condition can serve, but only if they do so according to the sex they were assigned at birth.