A federal appeals court on Thursday declined to reinstate President Trump’s policy requiring US passports to state the biological sex of their bearer at birth.
The Trump administration sought to overturn multiple lower court orders blocking the State Department from denying transgender and nonbinary Americans passports consistent with their gender identity.
A three judge panel on the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals found the Trump administration did not “meet its burden to demonstrate a strong likelihood of success on the merits of this appeal.”
The Trump administration further failed “to engage meaningfully” with a district court judge’s conclusion that the passport policy was based on “unconstitutional animus toward transgender Americans.”
“[T]he government devotes only two sentences to challenging the district court’s assessment of the plaintiffs’ animus-based Equal Protection Clause claim,” the appellate court judges, all appointees of former President Joe Biden, wrote.
“As a result, the government has failed to meet its burden to secure a stay,” the appeals court ruled.
The judges – Seth Aframe, Julie Rikelman and Lara Montecalvo – also found that the Trump administration failed to contest the plaintiffs claims that they would be irreparably harmed by the passport policy – claims they found outweighed the government’s position that “certain long-term institutional interests of the executive branch” would be harmed without reinstating the transgender and nonbinary passport ban.
The plaintiffs had argued in the lower courts that they faced “a greater risk of experiencing harassment and violence” while traveling abroad, under the Trump administration’s passport policy.
Under the State Department’s prior policy, passport applicants were allowed to select “M,” “F” or “X” as sex markers, and the selection was not required to correspond with the applicant’s biological sex.
The State Department scrapped the policy in January, shortly after Trump inked an executive order recognizing only two unchangeable sexes, male and female.
“The ability to access accurate identification is core to the safety and wellbeing of all people in this country,” Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “It has profound impacts on the ability of trans, nonbinary, and intersex to travel and exist in this country.”
“We are glad that the First Circuit upheld the District Court’s injunction in this case, and we will continue to advocate for the basic rights and dignity of our clients and all class members.”
The White House slammed the ruling as an attempt by the court to “thwart President Trump’s agenda and push radical gender ideology that defies biological truth.”
“There are only two genders, there is no such thing as gender ‘X’, and the President was given a mandate by the American people to restore common sense to the federal government,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told The Post.
