Supreme Court rules Trump admin can mandate passports to display Americans’ birth sex

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can order US passports indicate the holders’ sex at birth and remove designations for transgender and nonbinary individuals.

In an unsigned order, the court stayed a pair of lower court rulings that prevented the administration from enforcing Trump’s Day One executive order that “the policy of the United States [is] to recognize two sexes, male and female.”

“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” read the order, “in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

The court’s three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, indicated that they would have kept the lower court order in place, with Jackson accusing her colleagues of “senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome.”