Transgender Group Challenges Trump Administration Passport Policy

A group of transgender people is challenging the Trump administration's new policy that prevents the issuing of passports with sex designations that do not match an applicant's biological sex at birth.

Seven individuals represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit claiming the policy violates privacy and First Amendment rights. In 2022, the State Department allowed passport applicants to select M, F, or X for sex.

"The plaintiffs in this case have had their lives disrupted by a chaotic policy clearly motivated by animus that serves zero public interest," said Sruti Swaminathan, staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project.

"Our clients need to travel for work, school, and family, and forcing them to carry documents that directly contradict what they know about themselves to be true -- or withhold those documents altogether -- is a blatant effort to violate their privacy and deny them their freedom to be themselves."

The rule came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting the "biological truth."

The order, "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," declares that the U.S. will recognize only two sexes -- male and female -- based on immutable biological characteristics.

It prohibits the use of gender identity in legal and administrative contexts and mandates that federal agencies, including those overseeing housing, prisons, and education, adhere to this definition when enforcing laws and issuing regulations.

The order directs changes to government-issued identification documents, bans the promotion of "gender ideology" in federal programs, rescinds previous executive actions that promoted gender identity inclusion, and instructs federal agencies to eliminate guidance or regulations that conflict with the new policy.

It mandated the requirement that government-issued identification documents "accurately reflect" the holder's sex, defined as "male" or "female."

In a statement released by the ACLU, Reid Solomon-Lane, one of the plaintiffs, said he's lived his whole adult life as a man.

"Everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man," Solomon-Lane said. "Now, as a married father of three, Trump's executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease.

"If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family's safety."

The ACLU said it's been contacted by more than 1,500 transgender people or family members, "many with passport applications suspended or pending, who are concerned about being able to get passports that accurately reflect their identity."