In an unsigned 6-3 order released late on 6 November, the U.S. Supreme Court removed a lower-court injunction and allowed the State Department to require all passport applicants to list the sex assigned at birth. The policy reverses Biden-era rules permitting self-identified gender markers, including a non-binary “X.”
Liberal Justices Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, warning the change exposes transgender travellers to humiliating scrutiny and potential danger abroad. For now, applicants who already hold “X” or amended passports can keep them until expiration, but renewals will be reissued with birth-sex designations.
![Supreme Court lets Trump enforce birth-sex-only passport rule]()
The ruling reverberates through global mobility programmes: multinational HR teams with transgender assignees must reassess travel-risk profiles and may need to provide alternative ID (e.g., diplomatic passports or second-country travel documents) to avoid harassment at foreign checkpoints. Airlines using automated facial-comparison gates will also need software tweaks because gender markers in the barcode will no longer align with some vendors’ data fields.
The underlying class-action suit will proceed in the First Circuit. If the administration ultimately prevails, companies will lose a key inclusion benefit that helped recruit LGBTQ+ talent for expatriate roles. Diversity officers are already fielding questions about relocation to more gender-affirming jurisdictions such as Canada or the Netherlands.
Liberal Justices Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, warning the change exposes transgender travellers to humiliating scrutiny and potential danger abroad. For now, applicants who already hold “X” or amended passports can keep them until expiration, but renewals will be reissued with birth-sex designations.
The ruling reverberates through global mobility programmes: multinational HR teams with transgender assignees must reassess travel-risk profiles and may need to provide alternative ID (e.g., diplomatic passports or second-country travel documents) to avoid harassment at foreign checkpoints. Airlines using automated facial-comparison gates will also need software tweaks because gender markers in the barcode will no longer align with some vendors’ data fields.
The underlying class-action suit will proceed in the First Circuit. If the administration ultimately prevails, companies will lose a key inclusion benefit that helped recruit LGBTQ+ talent for expatriate roles. Diversity officers are already fielding questions about relocation to more gender-affirming jurisdictions such as Canada or the Netherlands.
