The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a nonpartisan legal services group providing counsel to troops discharged under the policy, said the survey's design could yield skewed results.

"Surveying the troops is unprecedented; it did not happen in 1948, when President Truman ended segregation, and it did not happen in 1976, when the service academies opened to women," network director Aubrey Sarvis said. "Even when the military placed women on ships at sea, the Pentagon did not turn to a survey on how to bring about that cultural change."