Passports Are Again Available to Transgender Americans, However Briefly
Leading Off: Get your passport while you can. Plus, the Supreme Court will rule on trans sports bans and increasing legal activism targets the trans community in the U.K. The top storylines this week.
by Assigned Media
For trans people seeking U.S. passports in the correct gender, a shifting legal situation means that right now may be the best time to access an update, but vulnerabilities remain.
In the wake of a day one executive order by President Trump, trans people attempting to update, replace, or renew their passport since February have been issued documents according to their sex assigned at birth. Now, however, a court order halting the practice has gone into effect.
The administration has begun to process documents according to earlier rules allowing people to change their sex marker, or choose an X instead of M or F. The change is in accordance with a June 17 order from a district court judge. The welcome news comes from Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning, who had previously reported that the Trump administration was dragging their heels on complying with the district court.
The district court’s order is being challenged, which may mean that this is only a temporary reprieve. The ACLU has written a detailed FAQ for trans people hoping to update their documents.
The Supreme Court will rule on bans on trans people participating in sports according to their gender next year. The high court announced last week that they will take up two cases challenging the bans. One, from West Virginia, involves a 15 year old trans girl who has never undergone any male pubertal change. The other involves a trans college student from Idaho.
In the wake of the high court’s ruling in U.S. v Skrmetti, which ignored overtly discriminatory language to rule that bans on gender affirming care for youth had nothing to do with the young people’s sex or transgender identity, commentators are already predicting that the court intends to increase the scope of discrimination against trans people allowed by U.S. law.
“The Supreme Court will decide next term whether states may lawfully prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in school sports on the women's team,” wrote legal commentator Mark Joseph Stern of Slate in a Bluesky post. “In light of Skrmetti, the answer will likely be ‘yes.’”
Another disastrous court ruling has emboldened anti-trans extremists in the U.K., with J.K. Rowling pledging to fund court cases to drive trans people out of public life.
The fallout from the ruling, which defined woman and manhood as biological and unable to be changed, includes a recent legal challenge to the painting of four crosswalks in Camden, England with the blue, white, and pink colors of the trans rights flag. Blessing Olubanjo, who brought the legal challenge to the crosswalks, claims that they infringe on her freedom of belief.
“As a Christian and a taxpayer, I should not be made to feel excluded or marginalised by political symbols in public spaces,” she told the Telegraph, a notoriously transphobic paper even for the notoriously transphobic U.K.