Federal Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Transgender Passport Policy

The Trump administration has been prohibited from implementing its proposed changes to sex marker designations on United States passports for many transgender individuals.

U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick of Massachusetts prevented the State Department from enforcing two modifications to its passport policy regarding sex markers. Transgender passport applicants were previously allowed to self-select male (M) or female (F) based on their gender identity or opt for a third option labeled “X.” However, under the new Trump administration, the State Department has mandated that passports reflect the person’s assigned sex at birth, and the “X” option was eliminated.

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The State Department and its secretary, Marco Rubio, acted in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump, in which he wrote, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and demanded the executive branch “enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality.”

In April, Kobick granted a preliminary injunction barring the State Department from implementing the passport policy for six people who joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging the executive order. On Tuesday, the injunction was expanded to include people who do not have a valid passport, whose passport expires within one year, who need to make changes to their passport so that the “sex designation align[s] with their gender identity or to reflect a name change,” and whose passports were lost, damaged, or stolen.

The Trump administration had argued that the influx of new passport applications would hamper the State Department’s functioning.

Kobick, a Joe Biden appointee, found this argument to be too thin. She wrote the government “has not offered evidence of the number of additional applications from such individuals it anticipates receiving.” The judge noted the administration has not “identified any specific ways in which the burden associated with processing additional passport applications is likely to impede the State Department’s functioning.”

“That burden, consequently, is too ill-defined and speculative to shift the balance of the equities,” Kobick said.

The administration also argued that its inability to make the passport changes would negatively affect its standing with foreign countries.

But Kobick once more found there to be insufficient evidence to prove this claim. “[The government] has not identified any specific ways in which an injunction requiring the State Department to issue passports bearing sex designations with which it disagrees is likely to injure the Executive Branch’s relations with foreign sovereigns,” she wrote.

Finally, the administration maintained that it would suffer “constitutional harm” by having to print the sex markers.

Kobick, again, rejected this argument.

“Even assuming a preliminary injunction inflicts some constitutional harm on the Executive Branch, such harm is the consequence of the State Department’s adoption of a Passport Policy that likely violates the constitutional rights of thousands of Americans,” she wrote.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly derided the ruling as “yet another attempt by a rogue judge to thwart President Trump’s agenda and push radical gender ideology that defies biological truth,” in comments to CBS News.

“There are only two genders, there is no such thing as gender ‘X’, and the President was given a mandate by the American people to restore common sense to the federal government,” she added.