{"id":25654,"date":"2025-04-21T05:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=25654"},"modified":"2025-04-21T05:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:24:08","slug":"donald-trump-hit-with-blow-after-vowing-to-ban-specific-passports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=25654","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump hit with blow after vowing to ban specific passports"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Donald Trump’s plans to ban passports which recognise non-binary as a gender status have been blocked by a federal judge.<\/p>\n

The 78-year-old President has made a lot of changes since returning to the\u00a0White House<\/a>, including reversing a lot of policies that his predecessor\u00a0Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0introduced.<\/p>\n

He signed\u00a0hundreds of executive orders<\/a>\u00a0right after being reinstated as commander-in-chief, making tweaks to\u00a0US<\/a>\u00a0regulations on\u00a0healthcare<\/a>\u00a0and immigration, among a myriad of other things.<\/p>\n

Trump<\/a>\u00a0also wanted to change the way members of the\u00a0LGBTQ+<\/a>\u00a0community, who identify as non-binary as well as intersex people, list their sex on\u00a0travel<\/a>\u00a0documents.<\/p>\n

When Biden was in office, he allowed people applying for passports to choose ‘X’ as their gender, rather than just having the options of ‘M’ and ‘F’ for male or female.<\/p>\n

This has been in effect since October 2021, but Trump wanted to get rid of this promptly when he became President again.<\/p>\n

One of the many executive orders he signed on his first day in office was titled ‘Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’<\/p>\n

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\"The\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The executive order signed by Trump explained that the US now only recognises two genders (Win McNamee\/Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

This narrows the definition of gender in the US, stating that a person is either male or female, while rejecting the idea that someone could transition into a different sex than what they were born as.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0stated<\/a>: “It is the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”<\/p>\n

The order also explained that changes would be implemented requiring that ‘government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder\u2019s sex.’<\/p>\n

Passport applications for those who had ticked the ‘X’ box were frozen after this executive order was introduced.<\/p>\n

According\u00a0to<\/a>\u00a0The Guardian, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an email to state department staff saying: “The policy of the United States is that an individual\u2019s sex is not changeable.”<\/p>\n

Employees were reportedly ordered to ‘suspend any application requesting an X sex marker’, and to ‘suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker’ from Trump’s revised definition.<\/p>\n

But a federal judge has now blocked the Trump administration from applying this policy, in wake of a lawsuit that was lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of several transgender and non-binary individuals.<\/p>\n

It argued that the new passport policy would not allow people to apply for an accurate passport, with the lawyer representing the ACLU, Sruti Swaminathan, saying it ‘demonised’ these applicants.<\/p>\n

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\"Non-binary\"Non-binary<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Non-binary and intersex passport applicants would no longer be able to use ‘X’ to describe their gender (Sandy Huffaker\/Getty Images)<\/cite><\/div>\n

“We all have a right to accurate identity documents, and this policy invites harassment, discrimination, and violence against transgender Americans who can no longer obtain or renew a passport that matches who they are,” Swaminathan said.<\/p>\n

The White House insisted that the new rules would ‘not violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution’ and that the plaintiffs of the case could still apply for a passport, just without being able to use ‘X’ as an option.<\/p>\n

US District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by Biden, sided with the ACLU’s application for a preliminary injunction.<\/p>\n

Expressing her reasons why, she said, as\u00a0per<\/a>\u00a0the Independent: “The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny.<\/p>\n

“That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest,” Judge Kobick said. “The government has failed to meet this standard.”<\/p>\n

The judge added that the plaintiffs proved that they would succeed in demonstrating the new passport policy and executive order \u2018are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation\u2019s constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans.’<\/p>\n

Li Nowlin-Sohl, who is also part of the ACLU’s legal team’, said Judge Kobick’s ruling marked a ‘historic win.’<\/p>\n

“This decision is a critical victory against discrimination and for equal justice under the law,” Li Nowlin-Sohl said, as\u00a0per<\/a>\u00a0AP.<\/p>\n

“But it\u2019s also a historic win in the fight against this administration\u2019s efforts to drive transgender people out of public life. The State Department\u2019s policy is a baseless barrier for transgender and intersex Americans and denies them the dignity we all deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Donald Trump’s plans to ban passports which recognise non-binary as a gender status have been blocked by a federal judge. The 78-year-old President has made a lot of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25656,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25654\/revisions\/25656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}