What the new US passport gender rules mean under the Trump administration

What the new US passport gender rules mean under the Trump administration

Three lines at US airports may look the same, but the rules behind them just changed in a major way. The US Supreme Court’s decision to let the Trump administration enforce passports marked with a person’s sex assigned at birth has set off confusion, anger and a fresh round of legal uncertainty for transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans, according to a report in the New York Times.

The court’s order doesn’t settle the larger case, but it does allow the administration to move ahead with its new policy while lower courts continue to debate its legality. A federal judge had blocked the rule earlier this year and an appeals panel upheld that block, but the Supreme Court paused both decisions, giving the US State Department a green light to implement birth-sex markers on first-time passports and renewals. Existing passports remain valid until they expire.

The immediate effect is on anyone applying for a new passport or renewing an old one. Under the revived Trump-era rule, the sex on the document must match the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate or earlier passport records, even if their current gender identity is different. This also ends the 2021 policy that introduced the gender-neutral “X” marker; those passports will remain valid until they expire, but holders will have to revert to “M” or “F” at renewal.

For many trans, nonbinary and intersex applicants, the challenge isn’t just the marker itself, it’s the paperwork. People with different names or sex designations across documents may face longer processing times or additional verification checks. Some states allow residents to update birth certificates, but the State Department can compare earlier passport records and flag discrepancies, slowing or complicating approval. The administration has also tightened Social Security gender-marker updates, adding another layer of potential conflict across federal records.

Passports aren’t just used at borders. Banks, employers, government agencies, academic institutions and healthcare systems often accept passports for identity verification. Advocates warn that a forced reversion to birth-sex markers could expose people to unwanted disclosure, deny access to services, or increase the risk of harassment when the document doesn’t match a person’s lived identity.

The Supreme Court’s decision is temporary. Lower courts will now take up the question of whether the rule violates constitutional protections or administrative-law standards, a process experts say could take years rather than months. Until then, the State Department’s policy remains in force, and travellers will have to navigate a system where legal identity, lived identity and federal paperwork may not line up cleanly.

The policy shift is one more chapter in a long history of gender-marker rules on US passports, from restrictive requirements in the 1970s to the more flexible standards introduced in 2010 and the “X” marker adopted in 2021. The latest rollback shows how quickly federal identity rules can swing with changing administrations, and how real people get caught in the middle.