These 5 trans celebs are speaking out against Trump's "deadly" passport policieshttps://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/these-5-trans-celebs-are-speaking-out-against-trumps-passport-policies/ 🔗John Russell (9 Oct 2025)
One of the many impacts President Donald Trump's anti-trans Executive Order 14168 has had is on transgender Americans' ability to get passports that accurately reflect their gender. Signed by the president on January 20, the first day of his second term in office, the order claims to "defend women's rights" by declaring that the U.S. will only recognize two sexes, male and female, as determined by biology.
Among its anti-trans provisions, the order requires all federal agencies to use the term "sex" rather than "gender" and to only issue government documents, including passports, that reflect a person's sex assigned at birth. In response to the order, the U.S. State Department suspended its previous policy allowing trans and gender-diverse Americans to update the gender listed on their passports to reflect their gender identity — including with an X marker for nonbinary people.
In February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit challenging the policy on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary people. In June, U.S. district court judge Julia Kobick barred the State Department from enforcing its anti-trans policy while the ACLU's case proceeds, and earlier this month, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
On September 19, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to allow the State Department to implement the policy while the case proceeds. Supreme Court rulings on the emergency, or shadow, docket tend to come pretty quickly, but for now, transgender Americans can get updated passports that reflect their gender.
However, many transgender Americans who applied for new or updated passports between the policy's initial implementation and Kobick's June 17 ruling have received documents that misgender them — including some high-profile folks who have spoken out it...
