Summary

Women have always been on the frontlines of our nation’s defense and have served in every major U.S. conflict, beginning with the Revolutionary War. For decades, however, restrictions barred women from thousands of combat positions. Those restrictions were largely rolled back for women in the Navy and Air Force in the early 1990s, but the ground combat ban remained in place — barring women from serving in more than 200,000 jobs in infantry, armor, artillery, and related fields. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the lines between “combat zone” and “combat support” routinely were erased, and where women were killed, wounded, and decorated for valor, the formal exclusion of women from ground combat jobs became impossible for the Pentagon to defend. In 2016, following a lawsuit by the ACLU Women’s Rights Project (WRP) on behalf of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and four servicewomen challenging the Pentagon’s combat exclusion policy, all remaining ground combat roles were opened to women.  Since then, roughly 5,000 women have served in those jobs. 

In December 2025, a decade later and under Pete Hegseth’s leadership, the Department of Defense (DOD) launched a secret six-month review of whether women should continue to serve in ground combat roles. The review became public only after it was reported by a news outlet. Then, in April 2026, DOD reassigned the study to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) and extended its duration from six months to one year. The lead researcher at JHU/APL was the same person who authored a controversial and widely criticized 2015 study, lauded by Hegseth, that was critical of women’s combat performance. 

Despite the current review’s apparent wide-ranging scope and potential negative consequences for thousands of women serving in combat jobs, DOD and Secretary Hegseth have provided no meaningful explanation for why it was initiated, its methodology, or how its findings may be used. It also comes amid a series of actions by Secretary Hegseth reflecting hostility to all servicewomen, including repeatedly denigrating women servicemembers and veterans and taking unprecedented action to fire senior women leaders — along with senior Black officers — and remove them from promotion lists. Viewed alongside his recent rhetoric and policies emphasizing a hyper-masculine conception of physical strength as the leading predictor of job combat performance, Hegseth’s actions have raised concerns that the formal review currently underway could serve as a pretext for reinstating the ground combat ban, in whole or in part.  

Given that Secretary Hegseth and other senior leaders have refused to provide substantive answers to questions about the review — even from members of Congress — the need for transparency is urgent. That’s why, in August 2026, WRP, NWLC, and SWAN submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records related to the ground-combat review. After receiving no meaningful response, we filed this lawsuit on October 8, 2026, seeking to compel DOD to comply with its legal obligations to the public. 

Our Lawsuit

NWLC, ACLU, and SWAN filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for failing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about the Pentagon’s decision to launch a study of the “effectiveness” of women in ground combat roles. The request seeks records concerning why the study was ordered, its scope, and what its findings could mean for women’s continued ability to serve in ground combat jobs, which they integrated ten years ago.  The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring DOD to promptly process the FOIA request and release all responsive records.