The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may require U.S. passports to list a person’s sex as assigned at birth, eliminating gender designations for transgender and nonbinary individuals.
In an unsigned order, the court blocked two lower court decisions that had barred enforcement of President Trump’s Day One executive order declaring that “the policy of the United States [is] to recognize two sexes, male and female.”
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” read the order, “in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
The court’s three liberal justices — Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor — said they would have left the lower court rulings intact, with Jackson criticizing the majority for its “senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome.”
“The Government seeks to enforce a questionably legal new policy immediately, but it offers no evidence that it will suffer any harm if it is temporarily enjoined from doing so, while the plaintiffs will be subject to imminent, concrete injury if the policy goes into effect,” Jackson argued. “The Court nonetheless fails to spill any ink considering the plaintiffs, opting instead to intervene in the Government’s favor without equitable justification, and in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party.”
Before Trump’s order, the State Department allowed passport applicants to choose “M,” “F,” or “X” as their sex marker, without it needing to match their biological sex. From 1992 to 2021, applicants seeking to change their marker had to provide proof of gender-reassignment surgery or treatment.
The Biden administration ended that requirement in 2021, permitting applicants to self-select their sex markers. That policy was reversed after Trump’s executive order, which recognized only two unchangeable sexes. A federal district court blocked enforcement of the new rules in June, and a panel of three Biden-appointed judges on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in September.
The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued in lower courts that the Trump administration’s new rule exposed them to “a greater risk of experiencing harassment and violence” while traveling abroad.
Attorneys at @TheJusticeDept just secured our 24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.
Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport.
In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue…
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) November 6, 2025
