Trump’s War on ‘Wokeness’ Clears Supreme Court Test with Transgender Passport Ruling

The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to enforce a policy that bars people from choosing gender markers on passports based on their gender identity. Instead, passports will now only carry the sex assigned at birth. The decision comes even as a legal challenge against the policy continues in lower courts.

The court lifted an earlier order by a federal judge who had blocked the policy on grounds that it discriminated against transgender Americans. The Supreme Court’s unsigned order was issued as part of an emergency appeal by the Justice Department.

The three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, dissented. In her written dissent, Justice Jackson said the decision would cause “real and immediate harm” to transgender Americans who may face invasive questioning, harassment, or barriers while travelling with documents that do not match their identity.

Until now, the State Department had allowed transgender people to obtain passports matching their gender identity since 1992, with medical documentation. Under the Biden administration, this was expanded to allow self-selection of gender markers and introduced a third option “X” for nonbinary individuals.

The Trump administration has reversed these changes as part of its broader rollback of transgender rights since returning to power in January. This has included restricting recognition of gender identity to only male or female in government records, banning transgender people in the military, and cutting research funding linked to LGBTQ+ communities.

In the passport case, plaintiffs argued that mismatched identification documents put them at risk of detention, accusations of carrying fraudulent IDs, and violence. They said they simply want to travel without fear.

The government, however, told the court that passports must reflect “biological sex” and that individuals cannot require the state to display what it considers an “inaccurate” gender marker.

The lower court case will continue at the First Circuit Court of Appeals, but for now, the policy takes effect nationwide.