The Army Should Assign Roles Based on Merit, Not Gender

WASHINGTON — Today, civil right groups filed a public comment in opposition to a rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, urging the agency to withdraw its proposed changes to the Head Start Program Performance Standards. The proposal would remove many of the standards that have made Head Start one of the nation’s most successful investments in young children and families and would make it harder for local programs to provide the high-quality services children deserve. Head Start’s performance standards establish minimum protections to ensure children receive high-quality education, developmental screenings, qualified teachers, and comprehensive support regardless of where they live. Removing those protections would create uncertainty for families and weaken accountability for taxpayers. “These proposed changes are unlawful. Congress requires HHS to protect the quality, scope, and type of services Head Start provides, and to ensure Head Start programs provide linguistically and culturally relevant comprehensive services. The administration cannot simply disregard those directives. This proposal would weaken standards that families have relied on for generations and undermine a program Congress specifically acted to protect,” said Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “By making Head Start programs less accessible, this proposed rule threatens women’s economic and social freedom and risks pushing them out of the workforce and back into the home.” “Head Start serves thousands of children and families across Illinois, providing a critical boost for success and creating opportunity in our state,” said Allison N. Siebeneck, director of the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project at the ACLU of Illinois. “The Administration has been determined to undermine – indeed dismantle – Head Start since taking office last year. They failed legislatively to achieve this goal and are attempting to accomplish the same end via these rule changes. We are proud to stand with our colleagues and partners in opposing this destructive and harmful effort.” “Head Start is a critically important support for children, families, and entire communities facing barriers that arise from systemic racism and inequality – a purpose Congress specifically created it for. As the Administration continues its attempt to unravel Head Start, this time through rulemaking, we continue our fight to stop any attempt to restrict meaningful access to this vital program,” said La Rond Baker, ACLU of Washington legal director. “Head Start exists to make sure every child in the United States has access to comprehensive education. The proposed Rule undercuts that purpose,” said Lori Rifkin, Impact Fund litigation director. “It erases crucial access requirements for the children most likely to be left behind, including children with disabilities, children in rural communities, children in foster care, and Black and brown children. The Administration's attacks on Head Start have been rejected by Congress and the federal courts, and we will continue to stand with Head Start programs and families to fight these illegal acts.” For more than 60 years, Head Start has combined early learning with health care, developmental screenings, nutrition, family support, disability services, and parent engagement. Decades of research show that this comprehensive approach improves school readiness, as well as health, educational attainment, and long-term outcomes for children and families. Rather than providing meaningful flexibility, the proposal removes safeguards that protect children while providing no additional funding to address rising costs for staffing, food, transportation, insurance, and facilities. Programs would be left with fewer resources and fewer protections to maintain high-quality services. The comment was submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, the ACLU of Washington, ACLU of Illinois, and Impact Fund. The group also represents a coalition of Head Start parents and providers that successfully halted previous attempts from the Trump administration to gut the Head Start program. Those attempts included a sprawling “DEIA” ban, restrictions of eligibility for many immigrant families, and cuts to more than half of the staff at the Office of Head Start, that likewise sought to fundamentally alter what Head Start providers could teach and the communities they could serve. The full public comment is available here.

Attorney Ashley Johnson reflects how Gloria Steinem shares the work of the ACLU and how it lit the way for her own future in advocacy.

NEW YORK – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project (WRP), the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), and the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking records from the Department of Defense (DoD) regarding its decision to undertake formal review of the “effectiveness” of women in ground combat roles. The request comes as DoD and Secretary Pete Hegseth have provided no meaningful explanation for why the review was ordered, what it will examine, or what its findings could mean for women’s continued ability to serve in ground combat roles. In December 2025, DoD launched a six-month review of women’s integration into ground combat units, a decade after lifting the remaining restrictions for women to compete for those roles, in which roughly 5,000 women have served. DoD directed the Army and Marine Corps to provide data on the “operational effectiveness” of those units, including internal studies about women’s integration, to the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit organization. DoD did not announce the formal review, which became public only after it was reported by a news outlet. In April 2026, DoD reassigned the review to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and extended the study’s duration to one year. “During his tenure, Secretary Hegseth has repeatedly questioned women’s ability to serve in ground combat, including by misleadingly claiming that occupational standards have been lowered to accommodate women. Such standards have been gender-neutral, by statute, for over 30 years,” said Gillian Thomas, senior counsel, ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. “This formal review raises serious concerns that the Department of Defense is laying the groundwork to once again restrict qualified women from serving in combat. The public has a right to know why DoD ordered the review, its intended scope, and whether women’s exclusion from combat jobs is on the table as a potential outcome.” “Excluding qualified women from ground combat would make our military weaker, not stronger,” said Elisa Cardnell, chief executive officer, SWAN. “Women have always served with distinction on the front lines. Since formally being integrated into combat jobs, they have excelled in some of the military’s most demanding roles, brought critical operational experience and capabilities to missions around the world, and strengthened recruitment and retention. Every qualified servicemember should have the opportunity to earn their place and serve.” “Investigating women’s effectiveness in the military is baseless, sexist, and offensive,” said Lauren Khouri, senior director of workplace justice at NWLC. “Hegseth has been explicit about his intentions to push women out of the military and today we’re filing to find out the extent and intention of this review. This is an attack on our servicemembers and the public deserves transparency.” Women have always been on the frontlines of our nation’s defense and have served in every major U.S. conflict. For decades, however, restrictions barred women from thousands of combat positions. Those restrictions were gradually dismantled as women proved themselves in increasingly demanding assignments, including during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where women were killed, wounded, and decorated for valor. In 2016, all remaining ground combat roles were open to women following a lawsuit by WRP on behalf of SWAN and four servicewomen challenging the Pentagon’s policy barring women from serving in those positions. Today, this progress is at risk following a series of actions by Secretary Hegseth that have raised concerns about women’s ability to serve in the military on equal terms. In addition to questioning women’s ability to serve in ground combat positions, Secretary Hegseth has repeatedly denigrated women servicemembers and veterans and taken unprecedented action to fire women leaders – along with Black officers – and purge them from promotion lists. He has also initiated changes to physical eligibility criteria for combat jobs across the military branches, based on an asserted belief that women have been held to lower fitness standards. These actions raise concerns that the formal review serves as a prelude to restrict women’s continued service in ground combat roles. Earlier this year the top enlisted leaders of each of the military branches testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that women’s integration into combat occupations has not compromised performance standards or operational readiness. Even under questioning from congressional leaders, Secretary Hegseth has not offered any evidence calling women’s combat “effectiveness” into question, let alone supporting the need for further study. The FOIA request seeks records related to the formal review assigned to the Institute for Defense Analyses and later reassigned to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, including records describing the scope, purpose, methodology, and anticipated use of the review. It also seeks records related to an earlier DoD review of combat jobs’ occupational standards. A copy of the FOIA request is available here.

Veterans reflect on their military service, the requirements of ground combat occupations, and the decade-long integration of women into those roles.