On April 18, U.S. District Judge Julia Sobick of Massachusetts ruled that the U.S. State Department has to issue passports to six transgender and non-binary people while litigation continues challenging President Donald Trump’s policy recognizing people only by their sex assigned at birth, media outlets reported.
However, Sobick didn’t block the Trump administration’s passport policy nationwide, as other judges have done in blocking other policies restricting birthright citizenship and barring transgender service in the military, according to USA Today. The passport lawsuit stated that 1.6 million people nationwide are transgender, 1.2 million are non-binary and potentially 5.6 million are intersex, citing surveys.
The litigants who can receive passports by marking X for their sex on their applications include Ashton Orr of Morgantown, West Virginia; Zaya Perysian of Santa Clarita, California; Sawyer Soe of Salem, Massachusetts; Chastain Anderson, who lives near Richmond, Virginia; Drew Hall of Wisconsin; and Bella Boe of Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Soe and Boe are aliases.)
Trump’s change reversed more than three decades of State Department policy that let people complete passport applications based on gender identity. In 2022, the Biden administration allowed applicants to choose X as a neutral marker on applications, in addition to male or female.
Sobick ruled the litigants were likely to win their court fight by arguing the policy is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Fifth Amendment. Sobick also found the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if they couldn’t obtain passports under their gender identity while the case works its way through the courts.