US Supreme Court allows Trump's passport policy targeting transgender people
By Andrew Chung
Thu, November 6, 2025 at 2:27 PM CST
The United States Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., May 17, 2021. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Donald Trump's administration to bar applicants for U.S. passports from designating the sex reflecting their gender identities on the document, part of the Republican president's crackdown on the rights of transgender Americans.
The court granted the Justice Department's request to lift a judge's order that had blocked the policy requiring passports to correspond only to a person's sex assigned at birth, while a class action lawsuit challenging the administration's action plays out.
The court's three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision.
The administration's policy reverses decades of practice at the U.S. State Department, which since 1992 had permitted passport sex designations to differ from sex assigned at birth with medical documentation.
Under Democratic President Joe Biden, the State Department in 2021 allowed passport applicants to self-select a male or female sex marker without such documentation, and added a third option "X" for nonbinary, intersex and gender non-conforming applicants.
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick in April found that the Trump administration policy likely discriminates based on sex and is rooted in "irrational prejudice" toward transgender Americans in violation of their equal protection rights under U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, and runs afoul of a law governing the actions of federal agencies.