Supreme Court revives Trump's transgender and nonbinary passport policy
- - Supreme Court revives Trump's transgender and nonbinary passport policy
Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY November 7, 2025 at 4:16 AM
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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Nov. 6 put back in place the Trump administration’s requirement that passports identify someone by their biological sex at birth, another ruling for President Donald Trump’s policies that stem from his assertion that someone’s sex cannot be changed.
Over the objections of the court's three liberals, a majority of the justices paused a lower court’s ruling blocking Trump’s passport policy for transgender and nonbinary people while it’s being challenged in court.
The high court previously allowed Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military to go into effect before courts decided whether it was legal.
"This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification," Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in an 11-page dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Jackson said the majority "fails to spill any ink" about how "the most vulnerable party" will be harmed by "probing, and at times humiliating additional scrutiny" at airport checkpoints if the policy can move forward before it's been fully litigated.
The majority's brief and unsigned opinion said those challenging the policy haven't shown that its purpose is to harm a politically unpopular group.
"Displaying passport holders' sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth − in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment," the majority wrote.
On Trump's first day back in office, he issued an executive order requiring the federal government to only “recognize two sexes, male and female,” declaring “these sexes are not changeable.”
The president required the State Department to issue passports that “accurately reflect the holder’s sex” based on that definition.
The Biden administration had allowed people to choose a nonbinary “X” identification marker and it eliminated a medical documentation requirement for requests to change a gender marker.
A partially completed passport application, with an X gender marker, is seen on a computer monitor in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 11, 2022.
In April, a federal judge said Trump’s policy couldn’t be enforced against people challenging the change, an order later expanded to include anyone affected by the new rule.
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick in Boston, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, said the policy is “based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans.”
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that decision is wrong and interferes with the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.
“Self-evident foreign-policy consequences flow from forcing the Executive to misrepresent biological facts to foreign states and to create the misimpression that the Executive endorses gender identity,” John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate lawyer, wrote in his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Lawyers for those challenging Trump's policy argued it lacked a reasonable explanation, is discriminatory and deprives people of the ability to travel safely.
“This is a heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves, and fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights,” said Jon Davidson, an attorney with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the ruling on social media.
“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” Bondi said. “In other words: There are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court revives Trump's transgender and nonbinary passport policy
Source: “AOL Breaking”
