Supreme Court rules passports can require biological sex

( Post Millennial )

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration is allowed to require that the sex listed on a person’s US passport be that of their biological sex. The ruling allows the Trump administration's rule to go into effect while the case plays out.

The order stated, "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."

In September, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit refused to pause a lower court’s ruling that blocked the administration from issuing passports with a person’s biological sex on it.

The US State Department under President Joe Biden had allowed those seeking passports to select "M", "F", or "X" as their sex marker, and the selection did not have to correspond with their biological sex. 

This was changed in Trump’s first day in office, during which he signed an executive order directing agencies  to "implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex," with sex being defined in the order as "an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female."Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented, with Jackson writing, "On January 22, 2025, the agency overhauled the rules for sex markers on passports, reverting to its pre-1992 practices. Its Passport Policy now requires that all new passports reflect the holders’ sex assigned at birth. Why? Because two days earlier, on January 20, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14168, characterizing transgender identity as 'false' and 'corrosive’ to American society."

Jackson wrote that the plaintiffs, who are transgender, "claimed that the Passport Policy violated the Equal Protection Clause twice over: It unlawfully discriminated on the basis of sex, and it lacked any rational basis because it was motivated by bare animus against transgender Americans. In addition, they claimed that the Passport Policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) insofar as it was arbitrary and capricious and was enacted without observance of the procedures that another statute—the Paperwork Reduction Act—requires."