The judge deals with an important blow for the triumph passport policy

A federal judge on Friday He joined the Trump administration to enforce their policy prohibits trans people updating the sexual marker in their passports.

The United States District Judge, Julia E. Kobick, in Boston, put on the side of the impulse of the American Union of Civil Liberties by a preliminary court while the lawsuit continues.

“The executive order and the passport policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and, therefore, should be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote in the partial mandate. “That standard requires that the government demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important government interest. The government has not complied with this standard.”

The preliminary court order offers temporary relief and only applies to six of the trans and non -binary plaintiffs in the case, which requires the State Department to allow them to obtain passports that reflect their sexual markers consisting of their gender identity.

The plaintiffs plan to present another motion to ask the Court to extend the court order to trans and non -binary persons throughout the country.

A few hours after returning to office in January, President Donald Trump signed An executive order Declaring that the United States would only recognize “two sexes, men and women.” A few days later, the State Department began to suspend all requests for passports of people who requested a gender marker X or a marker that differed from one in a previous passport.

In early February, seven transgender and non -binary people filed a lawsuit, orr v. Trump, after many of the plaintiffs tried to renew their passports and ended with documents with inaccurate sexual markers.

The American Union of Civil Liberties, which demanded the federal government on behalf of the plaintiffs, argued that the Executive Order and the subsequent passport policy are unconstitutional and will cause damage and violate the rights of trans people to privacy.

“This policy makes it incredibly insecure for trans people, not binary and intersex to travel when they do not have precise identification, whether it is forced to use a passport that takes them out as transgender and non -binary for strangers, even revealing the sex of their birth in each use or if you are afraid to be in other countries that are even more hostile. [toward trans folks] That the United States, ”Swaminathan, A ACLU lawyer, told News themezonei Swaminathan, before the decision.

The State Department did not follow the Administrative Procedure Law when it began to comply with the executive order that defines the “sex” issuing its own policy, argues the ACLU. According to that law, federal agencies must follow certain standards for formal regulations, including the publication publication and allowing public comments.

“That change was not announced 60 days in advance in the Federal Registry or any other public consultation. In fact, it was not announced at all,” said the ACLU complaint. “The State Department made the change surreptitiously.”

The quiet policy change of the department had immediate ramifications for dozens of trans and non -binary people who sought to update their passports, which throws the plans of many people around international trips, employment and medical care in danger.

A few days before the inauguration of Trump, Ash Orr, a Trans Organizer in Morgantown, West Virginia, and the homonymous plaintiff in the lawsuit, presented an accelerated request to update his sexual passport marker, as well as his last name.

A few weeks later, after sending his previous passport, a birth certificate and marriage license to the State Department, Orr said he received a call from a supervisor in a California passport agency that told him that he would need to “prove my biological sex.”

“That’s when I realized: I’m not going to recover my passport in a timely manner,” Orr told News themezone.

He was supposed to leave the United States on March 13 to be able to go to Ireland for an appointment for medical care affirmed by gender. Obtain medical care outside the US. Orr was forced to cancel his trip because he did not recover his passport until March 27.

He said that when his passport was returned, he still had an inaccurate sexual marker. His marriage license was torn and wrinkled, and his original birth certificate was still missing at the time he spoke with News themezone at the end of March.

“The reality is that I am caught,” said Orr.

Rodrique Ngowi through AP

The Trump administration argued in the demand that the passport policy does not “violated the guarantees of equal protection of the Constitution.” They also argued that the president has the authority to establish passport policies and that the plaintiffs could still travel abroad.

However, many plaintiffs in the Kobick case ruled that they have reported similar concerns and experiences.

An anonymous applicant, identified as Bella Boe, worried that his application to obtain a “F” marker in his passport was rejected and lost the opportunity to travel to Bermuda with the theater company of his university. His passport was returned with an inaccurate “M” marker.

Chastain Anderson, another plaintiff, wrote in an affidavit that fears that not only international trips for his work as an toxicologist will be lost, but will be subject to invasive security exams at the airport control points.

Before updating the sex in his driving license in Virginia, Anderson said he was forced to undergo a search for Striptease at Richmond airport, Virginia, in 2017. He was not allowed to update his passport after the State Department policy.

“I felt that it was a direct result of the fact that my body did not match my designation of sex in my license,” Chastain wrote. “I am not alien to these experiences, but I have not had to face them since I had a precise identification.”

The order is only one of several precautionary measures issued by federal judges to stop Trump’s broad executive orders that have threatened to change and remodel US society. Since the return to the Trump office, it has tried to delay protections for trans people, including the limitation of access to medical care affirming gender, eliminating its ability to participate in school athletics and the military, and alter the flow of federal funds for programs that help young people and trans adults.

However, in many of the decisions, federal judges have discovered that Trump has tried to affirm the authority that the federal government does not have, and silently avoid the norms of the normal government to boost the policies and regulations that are externally hostile to transgender people, particularly towards trans young people.

In March, several judges ruled against Trump in cases that defy the prohibition of their administration to the members of the transgender service in the army. Two federal judges issued pauses in Trump’s executive order that threatened federal funds for institutions that provide attention to affirm the gender for any person under 19.