# Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act (2010) Signed by President **Barack Obama on December 22, 2010** during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. The Act ended the 1993 [[Don't Ask Don't Tell]] policy that had restricted military service by openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans for 18 years. The repeal took effect on **September 20, 2011**, after the Department of Defense certified — as the statute required — that repeal would not harm military readiness. ## The Path to Passage The repeal effort had three converging fronts in 2010: 1. **Legislative** — The standalone repeal bill passed the House 250–175 in May 2010 but stalled in the Senate. In December, after the broader Defense Authorization Act vehicle for repeal failed cloture, Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Collins introduced a freestanding repeal bill that passed the House 250–175 again on December 15 and the Senate 65–31 on December 18 — with 8 Republicans joining all 57 Democrats and 2 independents 2. **Litigation** — In *Log Cabin Republicans v. United States* (September 2010), a federal district court had ruled DADT unconstitutional and issued a worldwide injunction against enforcement. The court of appeals issued conflicting stays of the injunction; the legislative repeal made the litigation moot 3. **Executive** — Defense Secretary Robert Gates had announced a working group on repeal in February 2010 (the Comprehensive Review Working Group), which produced a 343-page report in November 2010 concluding that repeal posed "low risk" to military effectiveness ## Implementation The Act required the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to certify that the military was prepared for repeal — a certification delivered on July 22, 2011. The 60-day implementation period required by statute then elapsed, making the effective date **September 20, 2011**. ## What Repeal Did NOT Do The 2010 Act addressed only the 1993 statute restricting service by gay, lesbian, and bisexual personnel. It did **not** address: - **Transgender military service** — which remained banned under separate DoD policies until June 2016, when Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifted the ban - **Veterans' benefits** for same-sex partners — addressed separately by post-*Windsor* (2013) administrative changes - **The under-other-than-honorable-conditions discharges** that ~14,000 service members had received under DADT — partial reviews of these discharges began only in subsequent administrations The trans-service piece would become its own multi-administration arena: Trump 1.0 reinstated the trans ban (2017–2021), Biden lifted it (2021), and [[Trump 2.0]] reinstated it again (January 2025). ## Place in the Vault The DADT Repeal Act is one of the **canonical legislative-victory examples** of the 2009–2010 LGBTQ-rights policy window when unified Democratic government, post-recession Republican demoralization, and 18 years of compounding activist and litigation pressure produced a rare federal LGBTQ-rights advance. The window closed almost immediately afterward — the Republican House takeover in January 2011 ended further legislative LGBTQ-rights gains for the remainder of the Obama administration. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Don't Ask Don't Tell]] — the policy this Act repealed