On September 19, 2025, the Trump administration took its most decisive legal step yet in a mounting battle over the rights of transgender and nonbinary Americans, filing a 41-page emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. The goal? To reinstate a policy that would restrict gender markers on U.S. passports to only "male" or "female," effectively banning the use of the "X" gender marker that had been available to Americans since 2022 under the Biden administration. The move has ignited fierce debate across the nation, putting the issue of gender identity and federal recognition squarely before the country’s highest court.
The origins of the controversy trace back to January 2025, when President Donald Trump, newly returned to office, issued a sweeping executive order that declared, “there are only two genders: male and female.” This proclamation, delivered during his inauguration and quickly codified into policy, directed all federal agencies—including the Department of State—to recognize only binary sex classifications on official documents. The executive order defined sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female,” and ordered that passports must “accurately reflect the holder’s sex” according to this definition, as reported by ABC 10News and Al Jazeera.
For many Americans, the policy change was more than just a bureaucratic shift. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, an estimated 1.6 million people in the United States identify as transgender, 1.2 million as nonbinary, and 5 million as intersex—populations that would be directly affected by the new restrictions. The Biden-era rules had allowed applicants to self-select “M,” “F,” or “X” on their passport applications, reflecting their lived identities rather than a binary imposed by the federal government.
But in June 2025, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s policy, siding with plaintiffs—transgender and nonbinary Americans—who argued that the ban was discriminatory and put their safety and dignity at risk. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place, keeping the Biden-era “X” marker available, at least temporarily. The Trump administration’s Friday Supreme Court filing was a direct response to this ongoing legal stalemate, with the Department of Justice seeking to lift the injunction while the broader lawsuit proceeds.
Solicitor General D John Sauer, representing the administration, forcefully defended the policy in the Supreme Court brief. “The Constitution does not prohibit the government from defining sex in terms of an individual’s biological classification,” Sauer wrote, referencing a recent high court decision that upheld a ban on transition-related healthcare for transgender minors. The administration’s legal team argued that the government should not be compelled “to use inaccurate sex designations on identification documents” that are “government property and an exercise of the president’s constitutional and statutory power to communicate with foreign governments,” according to Al Jazeera.
The White House echoed this stance in a statement to ABC 10News, with Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly asserting, “Lower courts continue to attempt to thwart President Trump’s agenda and push radical gender ideology that defies biological truth – and the Supreme Court must step in. There are only two genders, there is no such thing as gender ‘X’, and the President was given a mandate by the American people to restore common sense to the federal government.”
The administration’s push has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties groups and advocates for LGBTQ rights. Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represents the plaintiffs challenging the passport policy, called the move “an unjustifiable and discriminatory action that restricts the essential rights of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex citizens.” He continued, “This administration has taken escalating steps to limit transgender people’s health care, speech, and other rights under the Constitution, and we are committed to defending those rights including the freedom to travel safely and the freedom of everyone to be themselves.”
Max Disposti, Executive Director and Founder of the North County LGBTQ Center, told ABC 10News, “This has been, since the very beginning, an attack to LGBT identities. We're talking about 1% of the population that doesn't make our current administration sleep overnight.” Disposti added, “There is no data that shows us how, you know, having an X on your passport or respecting the gender identity of Americans that are traveling is problematic. There is nothing that goes in that direction, and unfortunately, this is motivated by pure false narrative that are quite hateful and quite dangerous for our communities.”
The practical effects of the policy have already been felt by some. Transgender actor Hunter Schafer, for instance, reported in February that her new passport was issued with a male gender marker, despite submitting documentation reflecting her female identity. Others, like Orion Hodge, a transgender man, have spoken openly about the emotional toll of the legal back-and-forth. “It could be taken away like that fast, like as fast as the ruling was made. And that scares me as well, and that's part of my exhaustion,” Hodge told ABC 10News after the June court ruling.
This legal battle is just one front in a broader campaign by the Trump administration to enforce binary gender norms across federal policy. Just two days before the Supreme Court filing, President Trump signed another executive order, “Keeping Them Out of Women’s Sports,” which bans people assigned male at birth from competing in female sports categories. The order, as reported by multiple outlets, directs the Department of Justice to enforce the ban and threatens schools with the loss of federal funding under Title IX if they fail to comply. The NCAA’s President Charlie Baker responded that the Board of Governors is “reviewing the executive order and will take necessary steps to align NCAA policy in the coming days, subject to further guidance from the administration.”
Supporters of the administration argue that these actions are necessary to preserve fairness in sports and the integrity of federal documentation. “We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today's student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” Baker said. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added that President Trump expects the Olympic Committee and NCAA “to no longer allow men to compete in women's sports,” and Trump himself pledged to direct the Department of Homeland Security to ban transgender athletes from entering the U.S. for the 2028 Olympics.
Yet for critics, these measures represent a systematic rollback of hard-won protections for transgender and nonbinary Americans. Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, argued, “Rather than protecting women and girls, sports bans harm any of us who do not conform to someone else’s idea of what a woman or girl should look, dress, or act like.” She urged policymakers to focus on closing the gender gap in sports opportunities and funding, rather than policing who can participate.
With the Supreme Court now poised to weigh in, the outcome of this case could have far-reaching consequences for how gender is recognized in the United States. The stakes are high—not just for the millions of Americans whose identities are at issue, but for the nation’s ongoing debate over the meaning of equality, privacy, and personal freedom.
The coming months will reveal whether the court upholds the administration’s binary vision or affirms the right of individuals to define their own identities on the world’s stage.
