A major update has dropped after Donald Trump signed a controversial executive order banning several types of passports in the U.S.
Another day, another Trump headline — and this one is exactly what you’d expect.
Since his inauguration on January 20, Trump has been on a mission, wasting no time. He’s already signed around 200 executive orders in a rapid-fire return to the White House.
While his changes targeted climate change and immigration, some were aimed at the LGBTQ+ community.
One of those orders, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” focuses on the traditional male-female gender binary. It declares that trans and non-binary identities will not be recognized under the law.
Donald Trump signed an executive order which states that there are only two genders (Win McNamee / Staff / Getty)
In addition to impacting the prison system, where transgender women will no longer be housed in female prisons, the order also affects non-binary individuals’ passports.
Here’s a bit of background:
Under the Joe Biden administration, non-binary individuals and those who wished to have ‘X’ listed as their gender on their passports were granted that option, which took effect in October 2021.
However, following the executive order, the issuance of ‘X’ passports and related applications has been put on hold.
In an email obtained by The Guardian, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told employees, “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”
He stated that all documents, from passports to consular reports of birth abroad, should reflect sex rather than gender.
Since this occurred in January, you might be wondering what the latest update is.
Well, here it is:
The ban has been blocked by a federal judge.
The order means that transgender and non-binary people will have to state their sex, rather than preferred gender (Peter Garrard Beck / Getty)
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick stated, according to The Independent:
“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy classify passport applicants based on sex, and therefore must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny.”
“That standard requires the government to show that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”
