"The Department of Justice filed an emergency request on Friday to lift a federal judge's order that had prevented the Department of State from enforcing a policy requiring binary male or female sex designations on passports. Justice Department lawyers argued that the government could not be forced to use inaccurate sex designations on identification documents that are government property and an exercise of the president's constitutional and statutory power to communicate with foreign governments."
"Jon Davidson, senior counsel for civil liberties group ACLU which is representing the plaintiffs, said on Friday that the administration's policy is an unjustifiable and discriminatory action that restricts the essential rights of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex citizens. This administration has taken escalating steps to limit transgender people's health care, speech, and other rights under the Constitution, and we are committed to defending those rights including the freedom to travel safely and the freedom of everyone to be themselves, he said."
"Trump's administration is seeking to reverse a policy introduced by the administration of former president Joe Biden in 2022, which had allowed passport applicants to choose X as a neutral sex marker on their passport applications and to self-select M or F for male or female. An estimated 1.6 million people in the US identify as transgender, while 1.2 million identify as non-binary and 5 million as intersex, according to UCLA's Williams Institute."
President Donald Trump's administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow a ban on passports that state the gender identities of transgender and non-binary citizens. The Department of Justice filed an emergency request to lift a federal judge's order that prevented the State Department from enforcing a binary male-or-female sex designation policy on passports. Justice Department lawyers argued the government cannot be forced to use inaccurate sex designations on government identification and that the policy is an exercise of presidential constitutional and statutory power to communicate with foreign governments. Civil liberties lawyers say the policy is unjustifiable and discriminatory and restricts essential rights. A Biden-era 2022 policy had allowed an X marker and self-selection of M or F. UCLA's Williams Institute estimates roughly 1.6 million transgender, 1.2 million non-binary, and 5 million intersex people in the US. The dispute is one of several relating to an executive order, including a ban on serving in the military.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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