The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy that prohibits transgender Americans from changing the sex listed on their U.S. passports to match their gender identity, a move that reverses a long-standing State Department practice and is part of the administration’s broader rollback of transgender rights.
The court granted the Justice Department’s request to lift a judge’s order that had blocked the policy, which requires passports to display a person’s sex assigned at birth while a class-action lawsuit challenging the rule continues.
“Displaying the birth sex of passport holders is no more offensive to equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth; in both cases, the government is simply attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the court said in a brief explanation of its order.
The unsigned order was issued on an emergency basis, as is usual in these cases.
The court’s three liberal justices: Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented from the ruling.
Judge Jackson wrote that the court has once again allowed a Trump administration policy to proceed “in a manner that allows harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party.”
“By preventing transgender Americans from obtaining gender-congruent passports, the government is doing more than simply making a statement about its belief that transgender identity is ‘false.’ The Passport Policy also invites the additional scrutiny, careful and sometimes humiliating, that these plaintiffs have experienced,” he said.
The Trump administration’s passport rule reverses a policy in place since 1992 that allowed applicants to change their sex designation with medical documentation. Under President Joe Biden, the State Department went further in 2021, allowing applicants to self-select male or female markers and adding an “X” option for nonbinary and gender nonconforming people.
In April, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick blocked Trump’s policy, saying it likely discriminated on the basis of sex and was rooted in “irrational prejudice” against transgender people. His order was upheld in June and again in September by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
The Justice Department argued that the court order was flawed and said citizens cannot force the government to “use inaccurate sex designations” in official documents.
The plaintiffs in the case said the passport rule exposes them to harassment and mistreatment, including accusations of carrying false identification and additional security checks. They told the court that they are “seeking the same thing that millions of Americans take for granted: passports that allow them to travel without fear of mistaken identification, harassment or violence.”
Since returning to office, Trump has issued several measures limiting the rights of transgender people, including banning military service and cutting funding for LGBTQ-related research.
With its 6-3 conservative majority, the Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with the Trump administration in such cases, including an earlier decision allowing its ban on including transgender people in the military to be enforced.
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