The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order Thursday requiring passport applicants to choose their sex assigned at birth. Photo by Pamjpat/Pixabay
Nov. 6 (UPI) — The Supreme Court Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to restrict U.S. passports based on gender identity, a setback for non-binary and transgender people seeking the document.
The court order requires the gender designation on the passport to reflect the biological sex of the person applying for it. Transgender and non-binary Americans have called the effort unconstitutional.
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment, ” the unsigned court order said.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with two other liberal justices, issued a dissent.
“Such a senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern,” Jackson wrote of the high court’s order.
“So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded,” she continued. “This court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or really any) justification.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the Trump administration’s passport policy, called the court order a “heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves.”
U.S. passports first carried sex markers in 1976, but in 1992, the State Department allowed citizens to choose a gender not assigned to them at birth as long as they submitted medical documentation.
In 2021, President Joe Biden allowed people to select an “X” on their passports if they did not feel they belonged to either biological gender.
Trump campaigned on reversing some gains made by transgender Americans, including the choice on passports and reversed both policies upon taking office in January.
Trump critics have said nonbinary and transgender Americans will face increased harassment and discrimination as a result of the court order.