When Mary Fox went to apply for a passport, she brought copies of her birth certificate, certificate of legal name, driver’s license, and a check, because the State Department website said passport fees had to be paid by check or cash. “They took Apple Pay,” Fox, a transgender woman, told Vox. “I was worried about the wrong things.”
Fox handed over the documents, paid, and received a slip for pickup of her passport after January 28 — in time for travel she had planned in early February. But when Fox returned on the 29th, the agency official said there was a problem in the system. “We don’t have authorization right now to issue a passport,” he told her in a recording of the conversation, which Vox has reviewed. Fox asked if he knew how long it would be until she’d be able to get one. “Unfortunately not, there’s no time frame,” he told her.
Fox had expected that there might be issues with getting a passport with a female gender marker in light of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order, which requires that government-issued documents reflect a person’s sex “at conception.” (The “conception” terminology reflects new influence from the anti-abortion movement, which seeks to ascribe full legal personhood to embryos from their earliest stages.) Fox was ultimately fine with being issued a passport with a male gender marker, telling Vox that, “being able to travel is more important than the letter on a piece of paper.”
“I don’t care what marker you put on it,” she said to the agency official, according to the recording. “See, from my perspective, all I want is any passport that has my legal name.” But Fox was ultimately told that the agency couldn’t issue her any passport, male or female. “So I can’t leave the country?” Fox asks incredulously. “I can’t answer that question,” the official replied.
Fox shared her story on TikTok, where it went viral, and she was ultimately able to collect her new ID documents — albeit with the male identity marker — on February 3.
But many others have encountered similar, bewildering bureaucratic limbo with no such resolution. These restrictions on transgender people’s passports — just one part of a broader campaign by the new administration to intimidate transgender Americans — affect more than just international travel. Passports are also frequently used for domestic purposes, such as applying for jobs, housing, loans, or other government benefits.
“The goal is to make life untenable for transgender and nonbinary folks,” ACLU attorney Aditi Fruitwala said. “They want to sow fear and chaos and to make everyone extremely afraid to be out and who they are.” As of Tuesday afternoon, over 1,700 people had reported concerns to the American Civil Liberties Union regarding new passport issues, Fruitwala told Vox.
Trans passports are getting caught in the crosshairs
On Trump’s first day back in office, he passed an executive order stating that the government would only recognize a person’s sex and not their gender, and that sex was unalterable. After the EO, which also required that government documents “accurately reflect the holder’s sex,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a directive to pause all processing of passports that requested that the gender be changed, leaving many applicants in limbo.
The policy change marks a sharp departure from decades of evolving passport rules. The inclusion of gender markers on US passports dates back to 1977, when government officials felt they needed to distinguish between men and women due to increasingly similar fashion trends. Beginning in the early 1990s, transgender Americans could update their passports by providing proof of having undergone gender-affirming surgery. By 2022, the State Department moved to allow for self-attestation.
Across the US, the majority of states allow people to update gender markers on their drivers’ licenses and birth certificates. And the Trump policy shift also comes at a time when other nations have been moving in the opposite direction — 14 countries now allow gender self-attestation on passports, and 16 permit “X” gender markers. In truth, the 1,700 transgender and nonbinary people reported by the ACLU likely far undercounts the number of people who have been struggling with their passports. One such person is Aiden McDermott, a 28-year-old trans man in New York, who applied to renew his expired passport on January 20, requesting a name and gender marker change as well.
“I honestly wanted the passport in case I needed to make a quick exit,” explained McDermott, who has not contacted the ACLU. Since he’s adopted from China, he’s found his US passport tends to be the easiest way to prove his US citizenship. “I just hadn’t had the money [to renew earlier] — it’s like $130 — so when I finally got the money I was hoping there would be time between Trump entering office and him signing things into law,” McDermott told Vox.
McDermott received State Department confirmation that his application was received on January 28, and his file was marked online as “in progress.” But by February 5 his online application status had changed to “not available” and he’s received no further information or update since.
Lawyers are taking the new passport rules to court
Last Friday, the ACLU announced it would be suing the Trump administration over the new passport restrictions on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary Americans. The ACLU alleges that the restrictions violate the Americans’ right to privacy, the First Amendment, the freedom to travel, and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Lawyers are also claiming the Trump administration failed to comply with a requirement for a 60-day notice and comment period.
ACLU plaintiffs include people like Drew Hall, a 25-year-old PhD student at the University of British Columbia whose passport has been held by the State Department for weeks, preventing them from traveling home to be with family in Wisconsin. They have a US wedding to attend in May and an academic conference in July, and worry about being stuck in Canada.
Another plaintiff is Reid Solomon-Lane, a 36-year-old Massachusetts resident who regularly travels to Ireland to visit his mother-in-law. Despite having been openly out and transgender since 2007, he now worries about what could happen to him or his three children if he’s stopped while traveling for a discrepancy on his documents.
This fear is not theoretical. “Any time you need to show multiple forms of identification, and this is especially true when you are traveling abroad, you might be accused of fraud if there is a mismatch,” said Fruitwala, who added she’s already spoken with a trans person who recently faced hostile questioning like this from a US passport officer.
Given all the uncertainty, LGBTQ rights organizations like Lambda Legal are now actively discouraging transgender people who have valid US passports from applying to renew or change their documents. “If you have urgent upcoming travel or an emergency need, you should seek out an attorney licensed in your state of residence,” the group advises.
When asked what the stalled applications mean for people like McDermott, a State Department spokesperson referred Vox to this webpage titled “Get My Application Status.”
Citing new agency guidance issued Monday, the spokesperson also said that if any applicant’s biological sex at birth is “not sufficiently established,” the government will hold the application and request more information. “Once we have the needed information, we will issue a new passport to you in your biological sex at birth,” they told Vox.
Per the new guidance, passports previously issued with an X marker will remain valid for travel until their expiration date, and those holding an X passport issued less than a year ago may apply for free to replace it with one “that reflects their biological sex at birth.”
Fruitwala said the new guidance does little to provide clarity. She’s hopeful that the federal courts will soon block the passport policy entirely, even though that won’t end the confusion and fear for trans Americans navigating the situation.
“I think the [government is] scrambling, it’s all a very confused and confusing policy,” she said. “They really don’t know how to implement this executive order.”
The post Trump’s new passport rules are trapping transgender Americans in bureaucratic limbo appeared first on Vox.
