Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration Passport Policy to Proceed
Washington D.C. - In a 6-3 decision Thursday, teh U.S. Supreme Court permitted the Trump administration to implement its policy requiring passport applicants to list their sex as designated on their birth certificate. The ruling overturns a lower court order that had paused the policy,which allowed applicants to self-identify as male (M),female (F),or neither (X).
The policy, initially challenged in 2021, had been blocked by a lower court, prompting the biden administration to appeal to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Frist Circuit refused to intervene. the government argued the injunction “injures the United States by compelling it to speak to foreign governments in contravention of both the President’s foreign policy adn scientific reality.”
The case was brought by a nationwide group of plaintiffs led by Ashton Orr, a transgender man who experienced issues with airport security while traveling with a passport reflecting a female sex marker. Orr’s legal team argued the policy would harm transgender and non-binary individuals, impede the government’s ability to accurately identify citizens, and stemmed from unconstitutional transphobia, violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. They asserted in briefs that the policy was “aimed at the rejection of the identity of an entire group – transgender Americans – who have always existed,” and that the government acknowledged the “outing of transgender, intersex, and nonbinary individuals” as a core result.
The supreme Court’s unsigned order stated that “displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles then displaying their country of birth,” adding that the government is “merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. She characterized the order as a “pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion,” and wrote that the Court had “once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification.”
the Court’s decision is not a final ruling. The policy will remain in effect while litigation continues in the lower courts. Male and female sex markers have been listed on U.S. passports as 1976, with the option to reflect gender identity – rather than birth sex – available for over 30 years.The “X” designation was introduced in 2021 under the Biden administration.
