The United States Department of State has suspended processing passport applications with ‘X’ gender markers and changes to gender identity on current passports, following an executive order Donald Trump upon assuming office, reports the Guardian citing internal report.
A confidential internal communication accessed by The Guardian reveals that Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed departmental personnel on Thursday to enforce new stringent guidelines for official documentation.
“The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” the email read.
The instructions from Rubio specify that “sex, and not gender, shall be used” in official documentation, including passports and consular birth reports abroad.
Personnel at the State Department received instructions on Thursday to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker” as defined in the executive order. These regulations affect both present and forthcoming passport applications.
The executive directive, entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, requires government identification documents to exclusively utilise “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”.
The State Department initiated issuing passports with the non-binary third gender marker ‘X’ in April 2022. While existing passports with ‘X’ identification remain valid, complications will arise during renewal processes, according to White House information provided to Notus. Rubio’s communication indicates that “guidance on existing passports containing an X sex marker will come via other channels”.