A federal judge on Tuesday extended an order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing a policy requiring identity documents to reflect an individual’s sex “at conception” to all transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans who want to change the sex designation on their passports.
A previous ruling, handed down in April, had ordered the State Department to allow only six trans and nonbinary plaintiffs named in a federal lawsuit to obtain passports with sex designations matching their gender identity while the case proceeds. The lawsuit, filed in February in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, argues the administration’s policy “is motivated by impermissible animus.”
The plaintiffs’ legal team at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Massachusetts and the law firm Covington & Burling LLP asked the court in April to certify a class of people adversely affected by the passport policy and extend the preliminary injunction to those who are currently impacted or may be impacted in the future.
Judge Julia E. Kobick, an appointee of former President Biden, granted that request on Tuesday. She wrote in her ruling that the six named plaintiffs and the new class of plaintiffs “face the same injury: they cannot obtain a passport with a sex designation that aligns with their gender identity.”
David Gergen, a journalist who served as a White House advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents,...
Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton (R) has filed for divorce from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton...
