A federal judge in Boston granted class-action status to transgender and nonbinary Americans on Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging a U.S. State Department policy that requires passports to reflect only the holder’s sex recorded on their original birth certificate.
The order extends a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy against six plaintiffs to apply to all class members who apply for or update passports while the case proceeds. In the earlier order from April, U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick concluded that the passport policy likely violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee because it discriminates based on sex and is “rooted in irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans.”
The State Department filed an appeal of the preliminary injunction last week.
The government maintains that it has a strong interest in passports that accurately reflect the holder’s sex. The State Department adopted the new policy earlier this year to comply with an executive order from President Trump directing all government agencies to limit official recognition of transgender identity and mandating that federal documents reflect what it termed the “immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
In court documents, plaintiffs argued that a mismatch between the sex listed on their passport and their gender identity puts them at risk of suspicion and hostility that other Americans do not face. During the first weeks of Mr. Trump’s administration, several plaintiffs received passports with an “F” or “M” marker contrary to the one they had requested. Another learned that selecting an “X” marker, indicating a nonbinary gender identity, was no longer an option, though it had been allowed since 2022.
The government argued against certifying trans and nonbinary passport holders as a legal class in the case, contending that gender identity is subjective and that a class-wide injunction would create an undue administrative burden.
Judge Kobick, who was nominated by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., found that those claims did not outweigh significant harm faced by transgender and nonbinary passport holders. She noted that plaintiffs in the case had described being forced to “effectively ‘out’ themselves every time they presented their passports,” leading to anxiety and fear safety fears.
“These are the types of injuries that cannot adequately be measured or compensated by money damages or a later-issued remedy,’’ she wrote.
Amy Harmon covers how shifting conceptions of gender affect everyday life in the United States.
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