Hi everyone,
The Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's requirement that a person's biological sex be identified on that person's passport. The argument against it was that it was in some way discriminatory and against principles of equal protection
In their order, granting a stay of the lower court's order, the Court said "Displaying a passport holders' sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment."
Those who brought the suit, arguing essentially for trans people to be allowed to lie on their passports, claimed that the government's interest in requiring sex on passports—a document for which the entire purpose is to identify people— "lack[s] any purpose other than a bare... desire to harm a politically unpopular group." That is, of course, insane.
The appeal is still working its way through the lower courts, but SCOTUS granted the stay because the justices feel that the government is likely to win on the merits of their case. Three of the justices, the liberal ones, all dissented.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan all said that granting the stay simply because the administration was likely to win on merit isn't a good enough reason to take up the emergency application the Trump administration filed and grant it. They believe that because the government will not "suffer harm" by allowing passport holders to lie about their biological sex the order should not be granted.
Instead, these justices claim that the passport holders who are unable to lie about their identity on official government documents are the ones suffering harm, saying "the plaintiffs will be subject to imminent, concrete injury if the policy goes into effect." It was the Biden administration that made the change to self-ID.
Prior to that, a trans person who had undergone genital reconstruction surgery could present evidence of that surgery and obtain a passport marked as the opposite sex. In 2010, they had to give evidence of "clinical treatment." But it was in 2021, under Biden, that people could simply the declare that they were the opposite sex and have their passport affirm it was so. Trump brought reality back to passports.
In penning the dissent, Jackson said "This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification."
Libby