The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration can enforce a policy requiring people to list their biological sex on passports, undoing a Biden-era rule that allowed people to self-select their gender or write X in the space where gender should be listed.
Americans will now have to select "male" or "female" on their passport application, corresponding to their sex assigned at birth.
Trump had made an emergency request to the court to stay a lower court order that would have allowed people to select their gender on a passport based on how they "identify."
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the court said in its order.
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated securing “our 24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket” in a post to X.
“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” she continued. “In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
The vote was 6-3 on the ruling, with the court's liberal-leaning judges dissenting on the ruling.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, saying in part, “This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
The case came about because President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office requiring in part that passports reflect biological sex.
In response, several transgender-identifying people sued to block the order, arguing that the rule violates their right to equal protection under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, as well as a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled against Trump, and the appeals court declined to block the lower court ruling.
The Supreme Court said in its ruling that Trump was likely to succeed on the merits of the case, which was why they decided to block the lower court's order.
In addition, the Supreme Court said, “And the District Court’s grant of class-wide relief enjoins enforcement of an Executive Branch policy with foreign affairs implications concerning a Government document. In light of the foregoing, the Government will suffer a form of irreparable injury absent a stay."
Allowing people to choose a gender different from their biological sex could have national security implications and lead to confusion about people's identities. It's clear that this ruling was needed, and will hopefully remain the law of the land.
