DOJ asks Supreme Court to unblock Trump passport gender rule
The Department of Justice (DOJ), under the Trump governance, has requested the Supreme Court to lift a lower court injunction blocking its policy that restricts passport gender designations to a person’s biological sex. Solicitor General D. John sauer argued that the federal district court’s ruling, which allows people to select their own sex on passports regardless of biological sex-including an X option-lacks legal and logical basis. The Trump administration reversed a Biden-era policy permitting self-selection of gender markers on passports and reinstated the traditional policy reflecting biological sex. A federal judge blocked this policy change earlier in the year, and an appeals court did not overturn the injunction. As a result, the DOJ has appealed to the Supreme Court for emergency relief. This case is part of a broader pattern of the Trump administration seeking and often securing interim victories from the Supreme Court on key agenda issues.
DOJ asks Supreme Court to unblock Trump passport gender rule
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to lift a lower court’s block of its policy restricting the gender on a person’s passport to his or her biological sex.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued a federal district court’s injunction, which allows people to select their own sex designation on passports regardless of their biological sex, has “no basis in law or logic” and said the high court should halt the order.
“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,” Sauer wrote in his petition to the Supreme Court.
“That injunction injures the United States by compelling it to speak to foreign governments in contravention of both the President’s foreign policy and scientific reality. As the lower courts have declined to stay this baseless injunction pending appeal, this Court’s intervention is warranted,” Sauer added.
The Trump administration quickly reversed a Biden-era policy allowing people to select their listed sex on passports, along with allowing an X designation, reverting to the long-standing policy of listing the biological sex of the passport holder on the document. Sauer argued the Trump administration’s decision to revert the policy is “eminently lawful.”
U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick blocked the Trump administration’s policy earlier this year for anyone who wanted to change his or her passport to denote the other sex, as well as for those who wanted to put X for their sex. A federal appeals court declined to lift Kobick’s order, leading the Justice Department to ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief.
Sauer’s Friday petition marks the latest instance of the Trump administration going to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket in the hopes of lifting a lower court’s ruling against one of its agenda items. The administration has been largely successful in getting interim wins from the high court.
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The justices have also shown frustration over lower court rulings, especially rulings that run counter to their precedents and recent rulings on the emergency docket.
While the Trump administration has dominated the high court’s emergency docket, some of the legal challenges to the administration’s policies have begun to make their way to the Supreme Court’s regular docket. The legality of the administration’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs will be heard for oral arguments in November.
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