The Air Force says it’s again allowing airmen and civilian employees to put their preferred personal pronouns in their email signatures and correspondence, backtracking on a Trump administration restriction after recognizing that a law exists protecting the practice.

The Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, announced Thursday it was scrapping the prohibition on pronouns as part of updated guidance on one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders — titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — that aimed to deny legal recognition of nonbinary and transgender people.

The news release said the “directive to cease the use of ‘preferred pronouns’ (he/him, she/her, or they/them) to identify one’s gender identity in professional communications (email signature blocks, memoranda, letters, papers, social media, official websites and any [Department of the Air Force] official correspondence) is rescinded.”

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Military.com learned from an Air Force official that an existing law regarding the use of personal pronouns was behind the change.

A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2023 explicitly states the defense secretary “may not require or prohibit a member of the armed forces or a civilian employee of the Department of Defense to identify the gender or personal pronouns of such member or employee in any official correspondence of the Department.”

The walkback of pronoun usage was welcomed by military LGBTQ+ advocates like Sue Fulton, an Army veteran and West Point graduate.

“I’m pleased that some part of Trump’s administration is still following the law,” Fulton told Military.com in a phone interview Friday.

The Department of the Air Force’s decision to ban pronouns in email signatures came from a Feb. 4 memo issued not long after Trump’s executive order. That directive, signed by Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Gwendolyn DeFilippi, named removing pronouns as the top action on a list of changes that needed to happen “immediately.”

Luke Schleusener, the CEO of Out in National Security — a nonprofit organization that supports LGBTQ+ national security professionals — told Military.com in a statement that backtracking on the policy falls in line with other hasty Trump administration decisions describing it as “sloppy, lazy and overloaded with animus.”

“At a time when the American people face growing global threats, these attacks on LGBTQIA+ service members, DoD civilians, and veterans make all of us less safe,” Schleusener said.

In late 2021, the Department of the Air Force announced it had allowed airmen and Space Force Guardians to include their pronouns in their correspondence. It was one of several major policy achievements of the service’s LGBTQ Initiatives Team, a barrier analysis working group.

But that team, as well as other barrier analysis working groups — which advocated for a wide range of quality-of-life improvements such as beards for service members and better fitting body armor for women — were gutted by the Air Force as part of its response to Trump’s executive orders.

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