Gender-Neutral 'X' Passports Could Soon Return

Newsweek

15-05-2025

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A federal judge could soon decide whether to expand a preliminary injunction that partially blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of "X" markers used by many nonbinary people on passports.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has asked the court to expand a preliminary injunction issued in April that only applied to six of the plaintiffs who sued the administration to also apply to other transgender and nonbinary people adversely affected by the policy.
Newsweek has contacted lawyers for the ACLU and Department of Justice for comment via email.
A partially completed passport application, with an X gender marker, is seen on a computer monitor in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 11, 2022.
A partially completed passport application, with an X gender marker, is seen on a computer monitor in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 11, 2022.
Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
The Context
On his first day back in office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that called for the federal government to define sex as only male and female and for that to be reflected on official documents, including passports, visas and Global Entry cards.
The State Department quickly stopped issuing travel documents with the "X" gender marker preferred by many nonbinary people–which U.S. citizens have been able to select since 2022—and also stopped allowing people to change the gender listed on their passport or get new ones that reflect their gender rather than their sex assigned at birth.
The ACLU sued the federal government in the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of a group of transgender plaintiffs in February.
What To Know
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick sided with the ACLU's motion for a preliminary injunction on April 18, saying the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the policy amounts to a form of unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Fifth Amendment. The judge also found the State Department was likely to be found to have violated the Administrative Procedures Act.
"The passport policy does indeed impose a special disadvantage on the plaintiffs due to their sex and the court therefore concludes that it discriminates on the basis of sex," Kobick wrote.
Her injunction required the State Department to allow six transgender and nonbinary people who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit to obtain passports with sex designations consistent with their gender identity. But it did not bar the government from imposing the new passport requirement on other transgender people.
Later in April, the ACLU filed a motion asking the court to certify two classes of people adversely affected by the passport policy, and to extend the preliminary injunction to apply to them too.
"Should the Court grant Plaintiffs' Motion for Classes will be all individuals who want or in the future will want either a U.S. passport with an 'F' or 'M' sex designation that is different from the sex assigned to that class member under the Poicy or who want or will want a U.S. passport with an 'X' sex designation," lawyers wrote in a memorandum in support of the motion.
"All members of either of those classes face the same irreparable harm as the six Original Plaintiffs for whom the Court has granted a preliminary injunction if they are unable to obtain a passport with the sex designation they want, because they will be forced either to use passports bearing sex designations different from their gender identity or forgo use of a passport entirely."
Government lawyers opposed the motion in a filing on Wednesday, arguing that the plaintiffs "have not introduced evidence—let alone made a clear showing—that members of the PI Class would incur irreparable harm. Instead, Plaintiffs simply assert that the PI Class members would suffer the same irreparable harm as the individual Plaintiffs."
They also argued in their filing that extending the injunction "to thousands of individuals, not to mention any potential reversal in policy, would add confusion and uncertainty to government policy."
What People Are Saying
Jessie Rossman, Legal Director at ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement in April: "By forcing people to carry documents that directly contradict their identities, the Trump administration is attacking the very foundations of the right to privacy and the freedom to be ourselves.
"It is important that every person has the ability to live and travel safely, and we will continue to fight to rescind this unlawful policy to make sure that this relief extends to everyone."
The State Department says on its website: "The White House issued Executive Order "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" on January 20, 2025.
"Under the executive order, we will no longer issue U.S. passports or Consular Reports of Birth Abroad (CRBAs) with an X marker. We will only issue passports with an M or F sex marker that match the customer's biological sex at birth."
What's Next
A hearing on the motion for class certification and to apply the preliminary injunction to the classes has been scheduled for May 27.