The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of seven plaintiffs who identify them as transgender or non-binary.
A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration’s executive order that bans people who are both male and female self-identifying from using “X” on marked passports.
U.S. District Judge Julia Covic of Massachusetts District Court granted a provisional injunction to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on April 18, maintaining the president’s enforcement action requiring that it be used as an identifier for government-issued identification documents in place of gender.
“Acknowledging two genders, male and female, is a US policy,” the order states. “These genders have not changed and are based on a fundamental and incontroversial reality.”
The order stated that gender identity is separate from biological reality and gender, reflecting a completely internal and subjective sense of self present in an infinite continuum.
We have ordered the secretaries of the State and Homeland Security Agency and director of the Personnel Management Agency to implement the changes to require government-issued identification documents, such as passports, visas and global entry cards, to accurately reflect the gender of the holder.
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It also ordered the withdrawal of previous federal guidance documents, such as the “White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality.”
The ACLU has attempted to maintain the Pro-LGBT policy introduced under President Joe Biden on behalf of five plaintiffs who identified as transgender and two plaintiffs who identified as non-binary, and took legal action on behalf of five plaintiffs who allowed a third option of identification.
“We all have the right to ensure that our identity documents are accurate, and this policy leads to harassment, discrimination and violence against transgender Americans who can no longer obtain or renew a passport that matches who they are,” ACLU lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said in a statement.
The Trump administration argued that the president has extensive discretion in setting passport policies, and that changes to these policies “does not violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.” The federal government also denied the harm that had fallen on the plaintiffs because of the policy, as they could still travel abroad.
The judge said the administration has not shown significant government interests in changing rules.
“The executive order and their facial passport policies should be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny, as they classify passport applicants based on gender,” Covic wrote. “The standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to the government’s important interests. The government was unable to meet this standard.”
Stacey Robinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
