Latest news with #PassportPolicy
USA Today
19-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
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 Show Caption Hide Caption 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 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.
Los Angeles Times
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Judge blocks Trump administration from passport changes affecting some transgender Americans
BOSTON — A federal judge on Friday partially blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of an 'X' marker used by many nonbinary people on passports as well as the changing of gender markers. U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by President Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union's motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out. It requires 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. 'The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,' Kobick wrote. 'That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.' Kobick also said plaintiffs have shown they would succeed in demonstrating that the new passport policy and executive order 'are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation's constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans.' '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,' she added. In an executive order signed in January, President Trump used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives' views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under the Biden administration. The ACLU, which sued the Trump administration, said the new policy would essentially mean transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans could not get an accurate passport. 'This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law,' said Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project. 'But it's also a historic win in the fight against this administration's efforts to drive transgender people out of public life. The State Department's policy is a baseless barrier for transgender and intersex Americans and denies them the dignity we all deserve.' Nowlin-Sohl said it plans to file a motion requesting the ruling be applied to all transgender and nonbinary Americans. In its lawsuit, the ACLU described how one woman had her passport returned with a male designation, and others are scared to submit their passports for fear that their applications might be suspended and their passports held by the State Department. Another mailed in their passport on Jan. 9 and requested a name change and to change their sex designation from male to female. That person is still waiting for their passport — meaning they can't leave Canada, where they live, and could miss a family wedding in May and a botany conference in July. Before he applied for his new passport, Ash Lazarus Orr was accused in early January by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration of using fake documents when traveling from West Virginia to New York — since he had a male designation on his driver's license but a female one on his passport. That prompted him to request the updated passport with a sex designation of male — four days before Trump took office. In response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration argued that the passport policy change 'does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.' It also contended that the president has broad discretion in setting passport policy and that the plaintiffs would not be harmed by the policy, since they are still free to travel abroad. 'Some Plaintiffs additionally allege that having inconsistent identification documents will heighten the risk that an official will discover that they are transgender,' the Justice Department wrote. 'But the Department is not responsible for Plaintiffs' choice to change their sex designation for state documents but not their passport.' Casey writes for the Associated Press.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal judge blocks Trump admin's gender-restrictive passport policy
A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Trump administration's move to cease offering the X gender marker on U.S. passports or allowing passport holders to change their gender marker. Keep up with the latest in + news and politics. U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, an appointee of President Joe Biden, granted a motion Friday for a preliminary injunction, which keeps the policy from being enforced while a lawsuit against it is heard, the Associated Press reports. The State Department implemented the policy, which affects transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, in January in keeping with Donald Trump's executive order recognizing only male and female sexes and denying that one's gender can ever change — something that is at odds with the view of every major medical group. The policy does not affect existing passports but applies to new ones and renewals. Five trans people and two who are nonbinary filed suit against the policy in February in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. 'The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,' Kobick wrote, according to the AP. 'That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.' Those who sued are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, its Massachusetts affiliate, and the law firm of law firm Covington & Burling. 'We all have a right to accurate identity documents, and this policy invites 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, as reported by the AP. 'This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law,' Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, added in a press release. 'But it's also a historic win in the fight against this administration's efforts to drive transgender people out of public life. The State Department's policy is a baseless barrier for transgender and intersex Americans and denies them the dignity we all deserve. We will do everything we can to ensure this order is extended to everyone affected by the administration's misguided and unconstitutional policy so that we all have the freedom to be ourselves.' 'This ruling affirms the inherent dignity of our clients, acknowledging the immediate and profound negative impact that the Trump administration's passport policy would have on their ability to travel for work, school, and family,' Jessie Rossman, legal director at ACLU of Massachusetts, said in the release. 'By forcing people to carry documents that directly contradict their identities, the Trump administration is attacking the very foundations of our right to privacy and the freedom to be ourselves. We will continue to fight to rescind this unlawful policy for everyone so that no one is placed in this untenable and unsafe position.' Under Biden, the State Department made the X option available to all applicants in 2022 and made it easier to change the gender marker. It had issued one passport with the X marker in 2021 — to Dana Zzyym, an intersex and nonbinary U.S. Navy veteran in Colorado who had sued the department for only offering a male or female choice on the passport application. Kobick had expressed skepticism about the Trump administration's passport policy when hearing arguments three weeks ago. 'It seems to deny that gender identity is something worth recognizing,' she said, according to Reuters. She also noted the 'slew of government actions against transgender and nonbinary people.' In defending the policy, the administration's lawyers said it 'does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution,' the AP reports. However, many judges have ruled that discrimination based on gender identity does violate these guarantees. And in the 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is sex discrimination and therefore banned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The high court's ruling, written by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, applied only to job discrimination, but it has been used to argue against discrimination in other areas of life. The Trump administration further claimed that the policy would not harm passport holders because they remained free to travel, but many trans, nonbinary, and intersex people worried that having a gender marker that doesn't match their appearance would cause difficulties when traveling.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge Blocks Trump's Anti-Trans Passport Policy
A federal judge on Fridayblocked the Trump administration from enforcing its policy barring trans people from updating the sex marker on their passports. U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick in Boston sided the with American Civil Liberties Union's push for a preliminary injunction while the lawsuit continues. 'The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,' Kobick wrote in the partial injunction. 'That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.' The preliminary injunction offers temporary relief and only applies to six of the trans and nonbinary plaintiffs in the case, requiring the State Department to allow them to obtain passports that reflect their sex markers consistent with their gender identity. The plaintiffs plan to file another motion to ask the court to extend the injunction to trans and nonbinary people nationwide. Within hours of returning to office in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the United States would only recognize 'two sexes, male and female.' A few days later, the State Department began suspending all passport applications from people requesting an X gender marker or a marker that differed from one on a previous passport. In early February, seven transgender and nonbinary people filed a lawsuit, Orr v. Trump, after many of the plaintiffs had tried to renew their passports and ended up with documents with inaccurate sex markers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the federal government on behalf of the plaintiffs, argued that the executive order, and subsequent passport policy, are unconstitutional, and will cause harm and infringe on trans people rights to privacy. 'This policy makes it incredibly unsafe for trans, nonbinary, and intersex people to travel when they don't have accurate identification — whether it's being forced to use a passport that outs them as transgender and nonbinary to strangers, including by disclosing their birth sex at every use or whether it's being fearful of being in other countries that are even more hostile [toward trans folks] than the United States,' Sruti Swaminathan, an attorney at the ACLU, told HuffPost ahead of the decision. The State Department did not follow the Administrative Procedure Act when it began to comply with the executive order defining 'sex' by issuing its own policy, the ACLU argues. Under that law, federal agencies are required to follow certain standards for formal rulemaking, including publishing notice of the rule and allowing for public comment. 'That change was not announced with 60 days' notice in the Federal Register or any other public consultation. Indeed it was not announced at all,' the ACLU's complaint read. 'The State Department made the change surreptitiously.' The department's quiet policy change had immediate ramifications for scores of trans and nonbinary people seeking to update their passports — throwing many people's plans around international travel, employment and medical care into jeopardy. A few days before Trump's inauguration, Ash Orr, a trans organizer in Morgantown, West Virginia, and the eponymous plaintiff in the lawsuit, submitted an expedited application to update his passport sex marker as well as his last name. A few weeks later, after sending his previous passport, birth certificate and marriage license to the State Department, Orr said he received a call from a supervisor in a California passport agency who told him he would need to 'prove my biological sex.' 'That's when I realized: I'm not going to have my passport back in a timely manner,' Orr told HuffPost. He was supposed to leave the U.S. on March 13 so he could go to Ireland for an appointment for gender-affirming medical care. Getting health care outside the U.S. felt safer, and he was already forced to travel outside of his red state to access hormone therapy. Orr was forced to cancel his trip because he didn't get his passport back until March 27. He said that when his passport was returned, it still had an inaccurate sex marker. His marriage license was ripped and crumpled, and his original birth certificate was still missing at the time he spoke with HuffPost in late March. 'The reality is that I am trapped,' Orr said. The Trump administration argued in the suit that the passport policy did not 'violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.' They also argued that the president has the authority to set passport policies and that the plaintiffs would still be able to travel abroad. Many plaintiffs in the case Kobick ruled on however have reported similar concerns and experiences. One anonymous plaintiff, identified as Bella Boe, worried that her application to get an 'F' marker on her passport would be rejected and she would lose out on the opportunity to travel to Bermuda with her college's theatre troupe. Her passport was returned with an inaccurate 'M' marker. Chastain Anderson, another plaintiff, wrote in an affidavit that she fears she may not only miss out on international travel for her work as a toxicologist, but that she will be subjected to invasive security screenings at airport checkpoints. Before she updated the sex on her Virginia driver's license, Anderson said she was forced to undergo a strip search by a TSA agent at the airport in Richmond, Virginia, in 2017. She also was not permitted to update her passport after the State Department's policy. 'I felt that it was a direct result of the fact that my body did not match my sex designation on my license,' Chastain wrote. 'I am no stranger to these experiences, but I have not had to confront them since having accurate identification.' The order is just one of several injunctions issued by federal judges to halt Trump's broad executive orders that have threatened to upend and reshape American society. Since Trump's return to office, he has tried to roll back protections for trans people, including limiting access to gender-affirming medical care, removing their ability to participate in school athletics and the military, and upsetting the flow of federal funding for programs that aid trans youth and adults. However, in many of the rulings, federal judges have found that Trump has tried to assert authority that the federal government does not have — and quietly skirt normal government rule making to push policies and regulations that are outwardly hostile to transgender people, particularly toward trans youth. In March, several judges ruled against Trump in cases challenging his administration's ban on transgender service members in the military. Two federal judgesissued pauses on Trump's executive order that threatened federal funding for institutions that provide gender-affirming care for anyone under 19.
CBS News
19-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from making changes to passport gender markers
A federal judge on Friday partially blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of "X" marker used by many nonbinary people on passports, as well as the changing of gender markers. U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union's motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out. It requires 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. "The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny," Kobick wrote. "That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard." Kobick also said plaintiffs have shown they would succeed in demonstrating that the new passport policy and executive order "are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation's constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans." "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," she added. In an executive order signed in January, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives' views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under former President Joe Biden . The ACLU, which sued the Trump administration, said the new policy would effectively mean transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans could not get an accurate passport. "This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law," said Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project. "But it's also a historic win in the fight against this administration's efforts to drive transgender people out of public life. The State Department's policy is a baseless barrier for transgender and intersex Americans and denies them the dignity we all deserve." Nowlin-Sohl said it plans to file a motion requesting the ruling be applied to all transgender and nonbinary Americans. In its lawsuit, the ACLU described how one woman had her passport returned with a male designation while others are too scared to submit their passports because they fear their applications might be suspended and their passports held by the State Department. Another mailed in their passport on Jan. 9 and requested a name change and to change their sex designation from male to female. That person is still waiting for their passport — meaning they can't leave Canada where they live and could miss a family wedding in May and a botany conference in July. Before he applied for his new passport, Ash Lazarus Orr was accused in early January by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration of using fake documents when traveling from West Virginia to New York — since he had a male designation on his driver's license but a female one on his passport. That prompted him to request the updated passport with a sex designation of male — four days before President Trump took office. In response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration argued the passport policy change "does not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution." They also contended that the president has broad discretion in setting passport policy and that plaintiffs would not be harmed by the policy, since they are still free to travel abroad. "Some Plaintiffs additionally allege that having inconsistent identification documents will heighten the risk that an official will discover that they are transgender," the Justice Department wrote. "But the Department is not responsible for Plaintiffs' choice to change their sex designation for state documents but not their passport."
