Photo of the latest federal passport form with no “X” option and the updated sex identification section. / Credit: U.S. Department of State
CNA Staff, Nov 7, 2025 / 11:56 am (CNA).
The U.S. Supreme Court said on Thursday that the Trump administration could require passports to display an applicant’s biological sex, granting the White House a victory in its efforts to roll back transgender ideology in federal policy.
The court said in an unsigned Nov. 6 order that requiring biological sex on a passport “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying [a] country of birth.”
In either case, “the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the court said.
The White House is “likely to succeed” in its effort to defend the law, the high court said in the order.
The decision overturns a lower court order that paused the policy while the lawsuit in question plays out in court. The suit was brought by a woman who identifies as a man and who challenged the rule on 14th Amendment grounds.
In a dissent, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan referred to the passport policy as “questionably legal” and argued that individuals who identify as the opposite sex will suffer “concrete injury” if required to display their sex on their passport.
Citing the government’s decades-old policy allowing for opposite-sex identification on passports, the justices argued that Americans who want to be identified as the opposite sex would experience “significant anxiety and fear for their safety” if required to correctly identify the biological marker on their passports.
In a post on X on Nov. 6, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the order was the administration’s “24th victory” at the Supreme Court so far.
“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” Bondi wrote. “In other words: There are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
The policy comes after several months of effort by the Trump administration to reverse transgender-related rules and policies at the federal level.
In January President Donald Trump signed an executive order removing gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms from governmental agencies. That order also affirmed that the word “woman” means “adult human female.”
That same order required government identification like passports and personnel records to reflect biological reality and “not self-assessed gender identity.”
The White House has also investigated hospitals for performing irreversible and experimental transgender procedures on children. Multiple U.S. children’s hospitals have ended their child gender programs in response to federal pressure.
Church leaders, including bishops around the world, have spoken out against transgenderism and gender ideology. In April 2024, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in its declaration Dignitas Infinita that gender ideology “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
The Holy See said at the time that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” and that “only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity.”
