(MENAFN- Live Mint) The US Supreme Court on Thursday (November 6) allowed President Donald Trump's administration to enforce a policy restricting transgender and nonbinary people from selecting passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

The ruling, issued on the court's emergency docket, marks another legal victory for the Trump administration. It effectively halts a lower court's order that had required the State Department to keep offering passport applicants the option to choose male, female, or X markers.

The court's three liberal justices dissented from the unsigned order.

Trump's Executive Order: Recognition based on birth sex

The State Department implemented the passport rule after Trump signed an executive order in January stating the US would“recognize two sexes, male and female,” based on birth certificates and biological classification.

This move reverses a 2021 policy under President Joe Biden that had allowed Americans to self-select gender markers, including an X option for nonbinary people, without providing medical documentation.

Impact on transgender and nonbinary applicants

Transgender individuals have already reported the effects of the policy.

Actor Hunter Schafer said in February that her new passport had been issued with a male gender marker, even though she had previously held documents reflecting her female identity.

The plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuit argue that such restrictions can lead to harassment or violence when identification documents fail to align with a person's lived gender.

“By classifying people based on sex assigned at birth and exclusively issuing sex markers on passports based on that sex classification, the State Department deprives plaintiffs of a usable identification document and the ability to travel safely,” their attorneys wrote in court filings.

Policy reversal and historical context

Sex markers first appeared on US passports in the mid-1970s. The federal government began allowing changes to these markers with medical documentation in the early 1990s.

Under the Biden administration, the State Department introduced a landmark 2021 policy allowing Americans to self-select their gender, including a nonbinary X designation, after years of advocacy and litigation.

The new Trump policy rolls back those changes, restoring the requirement that passports reflect the sex listed on a person's birth certificate.

Legal arguments and Supreme Court intervention

A federal judge had blocked the Trump administration 's rule in June, citing the potential harm to transgender and nonbinary applicants. The decision was later upheld by an appeals court.

However, Solicitor General D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court, invoking the President's authority over passports and foreign affairs. He also referenced the court's recent decision upholding a state ban on transition-related health care for minors.

“It is hard to imagine a system less conducive to accurate identification than one in which anyone can refuse to identify his or her sex and withhold relevant identifying information for any reason, or can rely on a mutable sense of self-identification,” Sauer wrote in the government's brief.

Also Read | Trump calls US govt shutdown 'survival of country'. Who's feeling the pressure?

MENAFN06112025007365015876ID1110308328