Judge orders State Department to provide passports to transgender people despite Trump order
Judge orders State Department to provide passports to transgender people despite Trump order
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Trump signs executive order banning trans women from sports teams
President Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women and girls from playing on school sports teams.
A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the State Department to issue passports to six transgender and nonbinary individuals while litigation continues challenging President Donald Trump's policy recognizing people only by their sex assigned at birth.Trump's order signed on his first day returning to office Jan. 20 directed the government to recognize only two sexes, male and female. The State Department changed its policies to issue passports that 'accurately reflect the holder's sex' assigned at birth, as directed in Trump's order.
The change reversed more than 30 years of State Department policy allowing people to fill out passport applications based on gender identity. In 2022, the Biden administration allowed applicants to choose X as a neutral marker on applications, in addition to M for male or F for female.
U.S. District Judge Julia Sobick ruled Friday that a half dozen transgender and nonbinary litigants were likely to win their court fight by arguing the policy is 'arbitrary and capricious' under the Fifth Amendment. Sobick also found the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if they couldn't obtain passports under their self-designated sex while the case works its way through the courts.
'The plaintiffs have also demonstrated a likelihood of success on their separate argument that, under any standard of review, the Executive Order and Passport Policy are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation's constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans,' Sobick wrote.
'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,' the judge added.
But Sobick didn't block the Trump administration's passport policy nationwide, as judges have done in blocking other policies restricting birthright citizenship and banning transgender service in the military. The passport lawsuit said 1.6 million people nationwide are transgender, 1.2 million are nonbinary and potentially 5.6 million are intersex, according to surveys.
"Having a sex designation on a passport that involuntarily discloses someone is transgender, nonbinary, or intersex can also cause harassment and discrimination while traveling within the United States," the lawsuit said.
The problem described in the lawsuit is that even for domestic travel, if a driver's license and passport identify a person by different sexes, Transportation Security Administration officials accuse the person of holding a fraudulent document.
The litigants who can receive passports by marking X for their sex on their applications, under the judge's ruling, are Ashton Orr of Morgantown, West Virginia; Zaya Perysian of Santa Clarita, California; Sawyer Soe of Salem, Massachusetts; Chastain Anderson, who lives near Richmond, Virginia; Drew Hall of Wisconsin and Bella Boe of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soe and Boe are pseudonyms.
'This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law,' Li Nowlin-Sohl, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union representing the transgender individuals, said in a statement. 'But it's also a historic win in the fight against this administration's efforts to drive transgender people out of public life.'
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment and the State Department said it doesn't comment on pending litigation.
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