Trump ban on changes to passport gender markers leaves transgender residents without IDs

For more than a year, state LGBTQ advocates spearheaded a campaign that helped hundreds of transgender individuals obtain U.S. passports with gender markers that reflect their gender identity and physical appearance after Tennessee ended gender updates for state drivers’ licenses. 

But an executive order issued on President Donald Trump’s first day in office — declaring U.S. policy is to “recognize two sexes, male and female” — ended the ability of transgender people to get passports that reflect their gender. A federal court temporarily blocked the order last month, but a final legal outcome has yet to be decided.

In Tennessee, where state officials in 2023 denied trans people the right to make gender changes on driver’s licenses, Trump’s executive order has jeopardized the only available form of government-issued ID available that accurately reflects the gender of transgender and nonbinary Tennesseans.

“Tennessee has the least amount of access to change gender markers,” said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. “A lot of transgender people here used passports as their primary gender marker.”

Trump’s order, she said, has created anxiety and uncertainty. On the day the president issued it,  Quinn’s organization fielded 27 calls from individuals anxious to learn whether they could still begin the passport application process, she said. 

Tennessee has long prevented trans people from amending their gender designation on birth certificates, the only state in the nation to explicitly do so. 

The 1977 law was upheld last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit Court, which found “there is no fundamental right to a birth certificate recording gender identity instead of biological sex.”

Gender, however, could be amended on Tennessee drivers’ licenses until Republican-backed legislation in 2023 defined “sex” in Tennessee law as “a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at time of birth.” Evidence of biological sex, the law said, is listed on a birth certificate.

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security then posted notice of new rules that it would not accept requests for gender marker changes that were inconsistent with an individuals’ birth certificate.  A legal challenge to the department’s rules, filed last year by the ACLU of Tennessee in Davidson County Chancery Court, remains ongoing.

Immediately following the drivers license notice, OUTMemphis, ACLU of Tennessee and other advocacy organizations made a statewide push to help individuals secure U.S. passports.

Between the passage of the 2023 Tennessee legislation and Trump’s inauguration, the groups assisted more than 200 people in obtaining a U.S. passport to reflect their gender identity and physical presentation, Quinn said.

Government issued documents that reflect accurate gender identity and appearance can be critically important, Quinn noted. 

Interactions with police or Transportation Safety Agency officers at security checkpoints examining IDs that appear at odds with an individual’s physical appearance may subject individuals to interrogation, allegations of fraud or criminal behavior and harassment. IDs are also checked by employers, financial institutions and election officials.

Christian Mays, community center coordinator for OUTMemphis, said all his official identity documents identify him as female. Mays, a transgender man, said he was pulled over once by police who accused him of impersonating someone else, because he presented as a man but his ID listed him as a woman. 

Mays recently got his name legally changed. He submitted his passport application to include his male gender identity the day before Trump’s executive order. His chief concern at the time was the ability to apply for a part time job at a pizza restaurant, which would require an ID. 

He said he is now uncertain whether a passport reflecting his gender identity will come through.

“I was thinking it was finally my time,” Mays said. 

Author: Anita Wadhwani

Anita Wadhwani is a senior reporter for the Tennessee Lookout. The Tennessee AP Broadcasters and Media (TAPME) named her Journalist of the Year in 2019 as well as giving her the Malcolm Law Award for Investigative Journalism. Wadhwani is formerly an investigative reporter with The Tennessean who focused on the impact of public policies on the people and places across Tennessee.

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