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.