President Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to block the issuance of passports that reflect the gender identities of transgender and nonbinary Americans.
The Justice Department filed an emergency request to lift a federal judge's order that bars the State Department from enforcing a Trump-directed policy.
The dispute is one of several over an executive order Trump signed after returning to office on Jan. 20 directing the government to recognize only two biologically distinct sexes, male and female.
The administration in court papers argued that the judge's order "has no basis in law or logic."
"Private citizens cannot force the government to use inaccurate sex designations on identification documents that fail to reflect the person’s biological sex — especially not on identification documents that are government property and an exercise of the president’s constitutional and statutory power to communicate with foreign governments," Justice Department lawyers wrote.
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick in Boston issued a preliminary injunction in April that stopped the enforcement of the policy against six of the seven transgender and nonbinary people who sued to challenge the policy. She later expanded the scope of her ruling to halt the policy's enforcement against all similarly situated transgender, nonbinary and intersex passport holders.
Kobick, an appointee of Democrat former President Joe Biden, found that the State Department policy was arbitrary and rooted in an irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans that violated their equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined on Sept. 4 to put the judge's injunction on hold, prompting the Trump administration's request to the Supreme Court.
© 2025 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.