WASHINGTON: A United States appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling requiring the Trump administration to resume issuing passports with an X gender marker for transgender and nonbinary citizens.
President Donald Trump had issued an executive order in January recognising only male and female genders, thereby ending official policies that acknowledged a third gender denoted by an X on United States passports.
District Judge Julia Kobick had ordered the State Department in June to resume issuing X passports to transgender and nonbinary individuals affected by this policy reversal.
A three-judge panel from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Trump administration’s request to stay the district judge’s order pending appeal.
“The government has failed to meet its burden to secure a stay,“ the justices stated in their ruling.
They referenced the lower court’s finding that affected individuals would suffer immediate and irreparable harms from enforcement of the challenged policy.
The State Department had first introduced X gender marker passports in October 2021 under President Joe Biden’s administration.
These passports were specifically designed for nonbinary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals who did not identify exclusively as male or female.
Trump’s executive order declared it United States policy to recognise only two sexes, male and female.
The order required all passports issued by the State Department to reflect the biological sex recorded at birth, using only M or F designations. – AFP
