Supreme Court reinstates Trump administration’s transgender passport policy

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled President Trump’s State Department can prohibit transgender Americans from listing their gender identity on their passports, for now. 

It hands another legal victory for Trump in his efforts to eviscerate what his administration calls “gender ideology.” The Justice Department brought the emergency appeal after lower courts blocked the passport policy for being rooted in “irrational prejudice.” 

“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 majority wrote in its unsigned ruling. 

The ruling appeared to be along the court’s 6-3 ideological lines, though the justices do not have to publicly disclose their votes. 

In dissent, the court’s liberals called the ruling “pointless but painful perversion.” 

“Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. 

“So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded,” the dissent continued. 

Solicitor General D. John Sauer called lower rulings blocking the administration’s policy “untenable,” casting them as infringing on Trump’s constitutional authority over foreign affairs. 

“The President’s choice to revert to prior policy and rely on biological sex—a choice that bound the State Department—should be the last place for novel equal-protection claims or Administrative Procedure Act objections,” Sauer wrote in court filings. 

The State Department policy requires passport holders to use their sex assigned at birth as their sex designation, prohibiting transgender people from matching it with their gender identity. The policy also removed the option for people to select “X,” leaving male and female as the only two options. 

“This new policy puts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people in potential danger whenever they use a passport,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio warned in court filings. 

Strangio and the ACLU represent transgender and nonbinary Americans who are suing over the State Department’s changes. 

They argue it violates federal law and constitutional equal protection rights, convincing a federal district judge appointed by former President Biden and later the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the policy.  

It marked the latest case implicating Trump’s Day 1 executive order that cracks down on what he calls “gender ideology” to reach the Supreme Court. Previously, the justices issued emergency orders allowing the administration to enforce its transgender troops ban and cancel diversity-linked health grants.