The Trump administration’s plan to outlaw the change of gender markers and the use of the “X” symbol, which is used by many nonbinary people on passports, was partially stopped by a federal judge on Friday.
President Joe Biden appointed U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who ruled in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union’s request for a preliminary injunction, which halts the action while the complaint is pending.
It mandates that six transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs in the case be granted passports with sex classifications that correspond to their gender identity by the State Department.
“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick stated. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”
Additionally, Kobick stated that plaintiffs have demonstrated their ability to prove that the executive order and new passport policy “are based on irrational prejudice towards transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation’s constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans.”
“In addition, the plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on their claim that the Passport Policy is arbitrary and capricious, and that it was not adopted in compliance with the procedures required by the Paperwork Reduction Act and Administrative Procedure Act,” she continued.
The president used a limited definition of the sexes rather than a more expansive understanding of gender in an executive order that was signed in January.
The decree rejects the notion that a person can change from the sex assigned at birth to a different gender and states that a person is either male or female.
Although the framing aligns with the opinions of many conservatives, it is at odds with the policies and key medical groups of former President Joe Biden.
The ACLU, which filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claimed that the new rule would essentially prevent Americans who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or intersex from obtaining a valid passport.
“This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project stated. “But it’s also a historic win in the fight against this administration’s efforts to drive transgender people out of public life. The State Department’s policy is a baseless barrier for transgender and intersex Americans and denies them the dignity we all deserve.”
According to Nowlin-Sohl, the organisation intends to submit a motion asking that the decision be extended to all transgender and nonbinary Americans.
According to the ACLU’s lawsuit, one woman had her passport returned with a male designation, and other women are afraid to apply for passports for fear that the State Department will halt their applications and hold their passports.
Another asked to have their name changed and their sex designation changed from male to female when they mailed in their passport on January 9.
They may miss a family wedding in May and a botany conference in July as they are unable to leave Canada while they are awaiting their passport.
Because he had a female identity on his passport but a male name on his driver’s license, Ash Lazarus Orr was suspected by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration in early January of using forged documents to travel from West Virginia to New York before he applied for his new passport.
As a result, four days prior to Trump’s inauguration, he requested the revised passport with the sex indication of male.
The Trump administration responded to the case by saying the change to the passport policy “does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.”
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Additionally, they argued that the plaintiffs would not be negatively impacted by the passport policy because they are still able to travel overseas and that the president had wide latitude in establishing it.
“Some Plaintiffs additionally allege that having inconsistent identification documents will heighten the risk that an official will discover that they are transgender,” according to the Justice Department. “But the Department is not responsible for Plaintiffs’ choice to change their sex designation for state documents but not their passport.”
