{"id":361857,"date":"2025-11-07T09:23:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/361857\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T09:23:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:23:17","slug":"supreme-court-lets-trump-block-transgender-passport-sex-marker-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/361857\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court lets Trump block transgender passport sex marker choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court<\/a> on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump\u2019s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers<\/a> that align with their gender identity. <\/p>\n

The decision is Trump\u2019s latest win on the court\u2019s emergency docket, and allows the administration to enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to correspond with their gender identity on new or renewed passports. The court\u2019s three liberal justices dissented. <\/p>\n

The high court has sided with the government in nearly two dozen short-term orders on a range of policies since the start of Trump\u2019s second term, including another case barring transgender people from serving in the military. <\/p>\n

In a brief, unsigned order, the conservative-majority court said the policy isn\u2019t discriminatory. \u201cDisplaying passport holders\u2019 sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,\u201d it said. \u201cIn both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.\u201d <\/p>\n

The court\u2019s three liberal justices disagreed, saying in a dissent that those passports make transgender people vulnerable to \u201cincreased violence, harassment, and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification,\u201d Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, saying the policy stemmed directly from Trump\u2019s executive order that described transgender identity as \u201cfalse\u201d and \u201ccorrosive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transgender and nonbinary people who sued over the policy have reported being sexually assaulted, strip-searched and accused of presenting fake documents at airport security checks, she wrote. <\/p>\n

The Supreme Court majority said being unable to enforce the policy harms the government because passports are part of foreign affairs, an area of executive branch control. The dissenters, though, said it\u2019s not clear exactly how individual identification documents affect the nation\u2019s foreign policy. <\/p>\n

The State Department changed its passport rules after Trump, a Republican, handed down an executive order in January declaring the United States would \u201crecognize two sexes, male and female,\u201d based on birth certificates and \u201cbiological classification.\u201d <\/p>\n

Transgender actor Hunter Schafer<\/a>, for example, said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she\u2019s marked female on her driver\u2019s license and passport for years.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs argue those passports aren\u2019t accurate, and can be unsafe for those whose gender expression doesn\u2019t match what\u2019s on the documents. <\/p>\n

\u201cForcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence,\u201d said Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU\u2019s LGBTQ & HIV Project. \u201cThis 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation. <\/p>\n

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy<\/a> in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge\u2019s order in place. <\/p>\n

Solicitor General D. John Sauer then turned to the Supreme Court, pointing to its recent ruling upholding a ban on transition-related health care<\/a> for transgender minors and calling the Biden-era policy inaccurate. <\/p>\n

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly applauded Thursday\u2019s order. \u201cThis decision is a victory for common sense and President Trump, who was resoundingly elected to eliminate woke gender ideology from our federal government,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Attorney General Pam Bondi also celebrated the order, saying there are two sexes and Justice Department attorneys would continue to fight for that \u201csimple truth.\u201d <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/us-supreme-court<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump\u2019s administration to enforce a policy blocking…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":359648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26563,3881,356,84,69,25742,57,86,51,82,175612,336,362,50,11335,80,52,370,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-361857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-anna-kelly","9":"tag-ap-top-news","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-district-of-columbia","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-gender","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-policy","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-joe-biden","18":"tag-jon-davidson","19":"tag-lawsuits","20":"tag-legal-proceedings","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-pam-bondi","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-united-states-government","26":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115507691749706744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}