Rubio Orders State Department to Stop Issuing Accurate Passports to Trans People

Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the State Department on Thursday to immediately stop processing applications from trans, intersex, and nonbinary people for passports that accurately reflect their gender.

Rubio’s order, a copy of which was provided to The Intercept, is one of the most immediate impacts of President Donald Trump’s bigoted executive order enshrining as a matter of federal policy that there are only “two sexes, male and female,” and that sex is an “immutable biological reality.”

The executive order, signed Monday, directed the State Department and other agencies to require that passports, visas, and government documents “reflect the holder’s sex” assigned at birth.

Starting in 2021, the State Department began allowing individuals to select a marker on their passport that accurately reflected their gender identity without requiring medical certification. In 2022, the State Department introduced an “X” marker for nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people.

Rubio’s order eliminates these options.

“The Department will no longer issue U.S. passports … containing an X sex marker and will suspend applications seeking to change an individual’s sex marker,” reads the order, which was sent to all diplomatic and consular posts around the world. The order directs State Department employees to suspend “all applications currently in process and any future applications,” pending further guidance.

There will be no allowances for individuals who have had gender affirming surgery, seemingly, since “the policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” per Rubio’s order.  

The White House previously told Washington publication NOTUS that trans and nonbinary people would be able to keep their current passports, but that when passports are renewed they would have to match the holder’s sex as assigned at birth, which must be either male or female.

Rubio’s order suggested, however, that the State Department is still considering options about current passports.

“Guidance on existing passports containing an X sex marker will come via other channels,” reads Rubio’s order.

LGBTQ+ rights organizations have vowed to challenge the executive order in court.

“We’ve been here before,” said Carl Charles, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, which successfully sued the first Trump administration over its refusal to issue an accurate passport to one of Lambda’s intersex clients. “This policy will certainly be challenged.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Update: January 23, 2025, 2:34 p.m. ET
This article has been updated with a comment from Carl Charles that was received after publication.