SCOTUS to Trans Americans: Carry Passports That Lie
The conservative majority freezes a lower-court injunction, letting Trump erase “X” and force “sex at birth” onto every new passport while the case crawls through appeals.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s emergency stay in Trump v. Orr, reviving a policy that forces new U.S. passports to list sex assigned at birth and shutting the door, for now, on gender-marker updates and nonbinary “X” designations.
The unsigned order, issued over the dissent of the Court’s three liberal justices, applies while the First Circuit appeal proceeds and through any eventual cert petition. If the justices later deny review, the stay dissolves automatically; if they take the case, it lasts until final judgment.
In a single paragraph that will launch a thousand bad encounters at TSA, the majority said that listing “sex at birth” on passports “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” calling it a mere statement of “historical fact” that doesn’t treat anyone differently. The result: effective immediately, the State Department can deny new applications that seek to change gender markers.
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, blasted the move as an inequitable use of the shadow docket that ignores who gets hurt in the real world. Plaintiffs, she wrote, face “imminent, concrete injury” if made to travel with documents that contradict their identity — while the government never explained any urgency beyond the President’s preference.
Jackson’s dissent walks through the history the majority waved off: for 33 years across six administrations, the State Department permitted gender-congruent passports — first with surgical proof, then medical certification, and since 2021 by self-selection — because the point of a passport is to attest identity and nationality today. She then details why the January 20 executive order declaring transgender identity “false” and “corrosive” and mandating “biological” sex on federal IDs triggered the State Department’s abrupt reversal on January 22.
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The harm isn’t abstract. On this record, travelers with gender-incongruent documents are more likely to be accused of using “fake” IDs, subjected to invasive pat-downs and strip searches, and exposed to harassment and violence at checkpoints — a burden no other Americans face. Jackson underscores that anxiety and safety risks rise when government forces people to carry papers that contradict who they are.
The Court’s order also shrugs off basic equity. The district court found the policy likely unlawful under equal protection and the APA after a 56-page opinion, and both the district court and the First Circuit refused to stay that injunction. The majority nevertheless stepped in — without showing any government harm that outweighs the plaintiffs’ injuries — and called the government “likely” to win.
Bottom line: the conservative majority just greenlit, on the emergency docket, a passports regime that misgenders people as a matter of federal policy. For transgender and nonbinary Americans, the damage isn’t theoretical — it’s at the airport, at the bank, at the job counter. The fight now shifts to the First Circuit, and, unless this Court changes course, right back here.
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Infuriating!! MAGA SCOTUS has made the other SCOTUS judges obsolete and brought shame on the entire SCOTUS history. They are sold-out unethical racist, misogynistic, intolerant, homohobic, transphobic, and ethnocentric who do not care for any kind of justice--only to please their orange overlord.