The United States State Department recently suspended the processing of passport applications for applicants who have selected “X” as their gender, per an executive order from President Donald Trump.
This development in gender marker passport changes has come in response to President Trump’s order establishing it as government policy to solely acknowledge male and female sex within the country.
State Department Directive and Enforcement Measures
The State Department’s passport suspension took effect immediately after the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, instructed the State Department last week to halt all existing passport applications that had sought the gender choice of “X” or wished to modify their sex marker, reported NBC News.
The initiative follows an executive order by President Trump that declares it the official “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and instructs officers to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, correctly represent the holder’s sex.”
Before these developments, the State Department had provided an option of “X” besides “male” and “female” for several years.
U.S. Passport Application Update and Guidelines
Under the new passport application policy for 2025, Rubio released a memo stating that the word “sex,” not “gender,” would be used in agency documents and that “the policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”
This policy alteration also impacts the birth records of U.S. citizens with children born abroad. The State Department has said it will cease issuing birth records with the “X” gender identification.
There is no current clarity on the validity of previously issued passports annotated with “X” under the gender option. A spokesperson for the State Department told NBC that updates would be provided as swiftly as possible on the department’s travel website.
As recent as 2022, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had also started offering an extra gender option on its popular TSA PreCheck program applications, enabling travelers to choose “another gender” in addition to “male” or “female.”
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