A debate in Congress over openly serving transgender troops is taking another turn Monday as a Democratic bill is introduced opposing an earlier proposal by Republicans that would force them to go back to serving under their birth sex.

The new bill, sponsored by Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., would ensure anyone who meets occupational standards can serve in the military regardless of race, color, national origin, religion or sex, which the bill specifies includes gender identity and sexual orientation.

Transgender military service -- and transgender rights more broadly across the U.S. -- remains politically contentious more than two years after President Joe Biden signed an executive order lifting a ban on their service put in place by his predecessor Donald Trump. The previous administration argued open service by an estimated 8,980 active-duty transgender troops would hurt military effectiveness and morale.

"Young people listen and hear what their political leaders say and internalize it, and I want young trans kids and LGBTQ+ kids across the country to know that they are respected and loved and deserve to be wherever they want to be," Jacobs, whose brother identifies as transgender, said in an interview with Military.com.

The bill, which has 22 Democratic co-sponsors, faces an uphill climb in passing while Republicans control the House, but Jacobs said reintroducing it offers a message of support to transgender Americans.

Republicans last month introduced a bill that would disqualify most transgender people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving in the military.

Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the feeling of distress caused by the misalignment between someone's gender identity and sex assigned at birth. But the American Medical Association maintains gender dysphoria is not a "medically valid" reason to disqualify someone from military service.

The Republican bill, from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., would go further than the Trump administration's ban by requiring transgender service members who have already come out to go back to serving as their sex assigned at birth. The Trump administration's policy allowed those who came out under the Obama administration policy to continue serving openly.

"Biden has turned our military into a woke social experiment," Rubio said in a statement last month, echoing other Republican criticism that the Biden administration is overly fixated on social justice issues. "It is a stupid way to go about protecting our nation. We need to spend more time thinking about how to counter threats like China, Russia, and North Korea and less time thinking about pronouns."