A military appeals court on Thursday ordered the government to refrain from referring to WikiLeaks leaker Pvt. Chelsea Manning as a male.

Formerly known as Bradley Manning, the private was court-martialed last year and sentenced to 35 years for forwarding a cache of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

After the August 2013 espionage conviction for leaking more than 700,000 documents and video, Manning announced that she would live as a woman with the name Chelsea going forward. She also appealed the conviction. A non-military judge approved the name change last year. Hormone therapy, which she is now getting, is assisting her transition. Manning has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

"Reference to appellant in all future formal papers filed before this court and all future orders and decisions issued by this court shall either be neutral, e.g., Private First Class Manning or appellant, or employ a feminine pronoun," the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday.

The military had opposed referring to Manning as a female in court documents. The government argued that "unless directed otherwise," it would continue "using masculine pronouns."

Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney for Manning, said the military tribunal is "dignifying Chelsea's womanhood."

"This is an important development in Chelsea’s fight for adequate medical care for her gender dysphoria. That fight continues but at least the government can no longer attempt to erase Chelsea’s identity by referring to her as male in every legal filing," Strangio said.

The "Free Chelsea Manning" network said Thursday that the military, which bans transgender people from serving, "is continuing to deny Chelsea’s request to grow her hair consistent with the standards for female prisoners."

Manning, who is jailed in Kansas at Fort Leavenworth, now writes for the Guardian. In December, she wrote:

The challenges that trans people are forced to navigate—even in accessing identification, but in so much more—are the result of institutional bias that favors cisgender people and assumes that trans people are deviant. When your own government’s policies send a message that you don’t exist—or that you shouldn’t—it’s devastating. Despite ample evidence that trans people have existed in most cultures throughout history, and the medical consensus that trans people can live healthy, productive lives, many governments continue to impose barriers on trans people that can make it almost impossible to survive.

The private added that "a doctor, a judge or a piece of paper shouldn’t have the power to tell someone who he or she is. We should all have the absolute and inalienable right to define ourselves, in our own terms and in our own languages, and to be able to express our identity and perspectives without fear of consequences and retribution. We should all be able to live as human beings—and to be recognized as such by the societies we live in."

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