The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to let it limit passport sex markers for transgender and nonbinary individuals, its latest effort to get the justices to intervene in a fight over restrictive policies targeting LGBTQ+ Americans.
Just after taking office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that said it’s the policy of the federal government to recognize only two sexes and that those sexes “are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The State Department later suspended its processing of passport applications seeking the gender marker of “X.”
The move reversed changes made during the Biden administration that were meant to accommodate non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming persons. Beginning in April 2022, Americans had been able to select X as their gender marker.
Lawsuits quickly ensued, and earlier this year, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the government from enforcing the policy on a nationwide basis via a class-action lawsuit.
US District Judge Julia Kobick, a Biden nominee, ruled that the policy on its face classified “applicants on the basis of sex” and therefore warranted higher judicial scrutiny.
Absent a ruling halting the policy, Kobick wrote, individuals who would be affected by it “are likely to experience irreparable harm … because they face a heightened risk of interference with treatment for gender dysphoria and of experiencing anxiety, psychological distress, discrimination, harassment, or violence any time they use their passports, not simply because they face these risks when using their passports for international travel.”
A federal appeals court in Boston earlier this month denied the administration’s request to block that order. Though it wasn’t central to its decision, the court said that the government had failed “to engage meaningfully” with the lower court’s claims that the policy might run afoul of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
This story is breaking and will be updated.