The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to block transgender and nonbinary people from choosing any sex other than male or female on their passports. The ruling comes as a lawsuit over the administration’s ban plays out in court.
The decision halts a lower-court ruling that required the government to continue allowing people to select male, female or X on their passports to reflect their gender identity on new or renewed passports.
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What did the justices say?
The court said President Donald Trump’s policy, implemented through an executive order earlier this year, doesn’t seem to discriminate against transgender people.
“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” the unsigned order said.
The order said that the government was just stating a “historical fact” and not subjecting anyone to biased treatment.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying passports listing only a gender at birth make transgender people vulnerable to violence, harassment and discrimination.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that Trump’s executive order called transgender identity “false” and “corrosive.”
Trump also declared that the U.S. would recognize only two sexes: male and female. This would be decided by birth certificates and “biological classification.”
What is the case’s history?
In June, a judge blocked Trump’s executive order on passports after a group of nonbinary and transgender people sued the government. Some in that group said they were afraid to submit applications.
An appeals court later left that judge’s order in place. But in an appeal to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to a previous ruling on minors receiving gender transitioning health care and argued that Congress gave the president power over passports. Sauer said that power overlapped with the president’s authority over foreign affairs.
The court took more than a month to reach its decision, the longest for any emergency case from Trump’s second term, according to CNN.
