A Massachusetts federal judge on Friday temporarily paused the Trump administration’s passport policy removing the ability of transgender people to change their sex markers and non-binary people to get “X” markers for their travel documents.
Biden appointee U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick held that a group of transgender and nonbinary people who sued the administration in February were likely to succeed with arguments that they were denied their constitutional right to equal protection for a policy with little apparent motivation beyond anti-LGBT+ animus.
She called the administration’s passport policies, stemming from a January executive order mandating the government only officially recognize two immutable sexes, male and female, “part of a coordinated and rapid rollback of rights and protections previously afforded to transgender Americans, suggesting that these challenged actions are built on a foundation of irrational prejudice toward fellow citizens.”
Kobick also shot down arguments from the government in its January order that the new sex policy would protect women’s safety in single-sex spaces like locker rooms.
“The sex listed on one person’s passport has nothing to do with the dignity, safety, or wellbeing of another person,” she wrote.
In the executive order, signed the first day Trump took office, the president accused transgender and nonbinary people of attempting to “attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” creating a “corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
Mainstream medical and psychological organizations like the American Medical Association maintain a conception of sex and gender that goes beyond immutable categories of male and female to include transgender, intersex, and non-binary people.
The Friday decision applies specifically to six defendants in the case, rather than nationwide.
The plaintiffs, who brought the suit alongside the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the passport policy was keeping them from traveling internationally and getting consistent documents. They cited past instances of harassment by U.S. airport officials, including an invasive strip search, while traveling with documents showing mismatched sex markers.
The Independent has contacted the White House and State Department for comment.
Prior to the Trump administration, the State Department has allowed individuals to change their sex marker in certain cases since the 1990s, and by 2021, following years of litigation, the first person in the U.S. received a non-binary “X” passport.
The Trump administration’s policies on passports are part of a larger push to end recognition and accommodation of transgender and other gender non-confirming people across the government, in areas including the U.S. military and special protective housing arrangements for trans people in federal prisons.
