We Won One!

Now the question what will Trump do? The courts have thrown out Trump's passport ban on us.

Judge blocks Trump administration from passport changes affecting some transgender Americans

AP News

By  MICHAEL CASEY

April 18, 2025

A federal judge on Friday partially blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” marker used by many nonbinary people on passports as well as the changing of gender markers.

U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out. It requires the State Department to allow six transgender and nonbinary people who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit to obtain passports with sex designations consistent with their gender identity.

“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”

USA Today reports that,

A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the State Department to issue passports to six transgender and nonbinary individuals while litigation continues challenging President Donald Trump’s policy recognizing people only by their sex assigned at birth.Trump’s order signed on his first day returning to office Jan. 20 directed the government to recognize only two sexes, male and female. The State Department changed its policies to issue passports that “accurately reflect the holder’s sex” assigned at birth, as directed in Trump’s order.

The change reversed more than 30 years of State Department policy allowing people to fill out passport applications based on gender identity. In 2022, the Biden administration allowed applicants to choose X as a neutral marker on applications, in addition to M for male or F for female.

[...]

U.S. District Judge Julia Sobick ruled April 18 that a half dozen transgender and nonbinary litigants were likely to win their court fight by arguing the policy is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Fifth Amendment. Sobick also found the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if they couldn’t obtain passports under their self-designated sex while the case works its way through the courts.

But you have to realize that this only affects the six trans people that sued.

But Sobick didn’t block the Trump administration’s passport policy nationwide, as judges have done in blocking other policies restricting birthright citizenship and banning transgender service in the military. The passport lawsuit said 1.6 million people nationwide are transgender, 1.2 million are nonbinary and potentially 5.6 million are intersex, according to surveys.

Just remember that this is only one judge... then there is a the Appeals, followed by the Supreme Court