A federal court on Thursday rejected an appeal by the Trump administration to deny transgender and nonbinary Americans passports reflecting their gender identity, upholding a preliminary injunction against a policy requiring identity documents to reflect a person’s sex “at conception.”
In an order, a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the Trump administration had failed to argue the policy does not violate federal law and that the government would be “irreparably injured” if the policy were enjoined. The administration, the judges wrote, had also failed “to engage meaningfully” with an earlier district court analysis that its passport policy is rooted in an “unconstitutional animus toward transgender Americans.”
In April, a federal judge in Boston blocked the State Department from denying six transgender and nonbinary Americans named in a lawsuit against the Trump administration passports with sex designations consistent with their gender identity. In June, Judge Julia E. Kobick, an appointee of former President Biden, expanded that preliminary injunction to include any transgender American desiring a passport that matches their gender.
Kobick wrote in April that the administration had failed “to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest.”
The State Department suspended processing applications from Americans seeking to update their passports with a new gender marker in January, shortly after President Trump signed an executive order proclaiming the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, male and female.
The order, which Trump issued during his first hours back in office, directs the departments of State and Homeland Security and the Office of Personnel Management to mandate that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas and Global Entry cards, reflect an individual’s sex at birth over their gender identity. The State Department previously allowed U.S. passport holders to self-select their sex designations, including an “unspecified” gender marker denoted by the letter X.
Li Nowlin-Sohl, staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, one of the groups representing the transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs challenging the administration’s policy, said Thursday that the government’s attempts to deny them passports have “no basis in law or policy.”
“The ability to access accurate identification is core to the safety and wellbeing of all people in this country,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
