WASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump’s executive order Jan. 20 mandates discrimination against transgender individuals in federal government programs, according to the ACLU.
The ACLU notes, in a lawsuit, that following President Trump’s executive order, the Departments of State and Homeland Security were instructed that “government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” are required to “reflect their sex at conception.”
The ACLU charges the State Department rejected applications of people attempting to “update the sex designation on their U.S. passports” and given “newly-issued passports marked” with the applicant’s “sex assigned at birth.”
According to the ACLU, the State Department has additionally begun to hold the passports of “transgender, intersex, and nonbinary” applicants attempting to modify their identification documents.
ACLU, ACLU of Massachusetts, and Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit for the seven people unable to obtain passports that match who they are, as a result of the new Passport Policy.
The ACLU said the case argues that the new passport policy “violates the right to travel and right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” and is “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
Additionally, the lawsuit claims the new policy is “in violation” of the “First Amendment rights” of “transgender, nonbinary and intersex passport holders,” adds the ACLU.
The ACLU cites Reid Solomon-Lane, a transgender man from Massachusetts and one of the plaintiffs, who has stated, “I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease… (the policy has) threatened that life of safety and ease.”
Reid Solomon-Lane added that if their “passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used it for travel or identification, putting both my safety and my family’s safety at risk.”
