On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed a raft of executive orders, including one proclaiming that the United States will only recognize “two sexes, male and female”—a move that could have significant practical and psychological implications for trans and nonbinary people.
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The order accuses “ideologues” of denying “the biological reality of sex” and dismisses gender identity, calling it “disconnected from biological reality.” It declares that all federal agencies and employees will henceforth use the term “sex,” not “gender,” in all applicable policies and documents, and that government-issued forms of identifications will “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
Sex and gender are not always the same thing. Sex generally refers to a person’s anatomy, whereas gender has to do with a person’s social and personal identity and may differ from their assigned sex at birth.
“This [executive order] is clearly a plan from the Trump Administration to erase transgender people’s existence under the law,” says Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The order has seen swift implementation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an internal memo to Department of State staff asking them to pause all gender marker update applications, as well as halting requests for the “X” gender marker on a passport, which was rolled out in 2022 for nonbinary folks, per The Guardian.
Simone Chriss, an attorney and the Director of Transgender Rights Initiative at Southern Legal Counsel in Florida, says that, as of Nov. 23, she heard from two clients who experienced this firsthand. “One was told verbally over the phone that a passport application seeking any kind of gender marker change had been suspended. The other one was told in person at the passport acceptance facility that they weren’t going to be processed, so there was no point in submitting the application,” says Chriss. She expects lawsuits to be filed challenging the measures in the order.
Florida is one of four states that have banned gender marker updates on state IDs, according to the Movement Advancement Project, though other states have introduced bills that would prohibit similar action. While Trump’s executive order has no bearing over states’ decisions about amending local identification documents, it has reinforced fears among the trangender community. “The goal of this executive order is to create a climate of fear and to try to intimidate folks into making their lives smaller,” says Seldin.
Here are the implications of Trump’s executive order on gender.
How does this impact federal identification documents?
Trump’s executive order denies the legal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, barring them from updating their gender on federal documents, such as passports, visas, and Global Entry cards.
TIME reached out to the Consular Affairs office to inquire about new directives regarding gender marker changes on federal documents. A State Department spokesperson directed TIME to the White House, which did not respond to questions as of press time.
Under the Biden Administration, citizens could update their gender markers to reflect their gender identity in a process Chriss calls a more “affirming” policy of self-attestation. “That means you signed an affidavit saying ‘this is what my gender marker is,’ and you didn’t need medical certification,” she says. In 2022, the Biden Administration rolled out an “X” gender marker for nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming people.
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Citizens who have already amended their federal documents still have a valid form of identification, regardless of the change. “The White House has said this is not retroactive,” says Chriss. But the Department of State will no longer issue new passports with the “X” gender marker.
Experts instead say problems will likely arise when it comes to passport renewal, which happens every 10 years for those aged 16 and up. “Many folks have 10 years before they have to worry about that, but upon renewal, it sounds like they will revert it back to the person’s sex assigned to birth,” says Chriss. Still, it isn’t clear how the government would implement such a policy. If birth certificates or state IDs have already been amended, it’s unclear how the State Department would know that a person is transgender and apply the policy set forth by Trump.
How does this impact state identification documents?
The executive order does not impact state policies or most state identification documents. “States that already banned these things have further support for their banned policies, but it doesn’t compel any state to adopt a law banning or a policy banning gender marker changes,” says Chriss.
However, there are concerns about the implications of this policy on the REAL ID Act, which has stricter standards for the issuance of identification cards compared to a standard license, and requests additional or supplemental documents to verify a person’s information. Starting on May 7, residents must have a REAL ID in order to fly domestically or to access certain federal facilities. “If you currently have a driver’s license that says the correct gender marker, and then to become REAL ID Act compliant, you have to show your birth certificate, or passport—could that cause an issue? It’s very state specific, and we’re going to have to see how different states handle it,” Chriss says.
Transgender and nonbinary people living in states that bar gender marker changes have already been living with discordant documents. Seldin warns that there could be issues when it comes to applications where two forms of IDs are necessary, such as applying to loans, employment, or housing.
For some, discordant documents could also pose safety risks because it may out them. “You are giving the discretion to the person in front of you as to whether or not they’re going to accept or understand,” says Imara Jones, an American political journalist and the chief executive officer of the independent news organization TransLash Media. “It’s giving people a license to discriminate because you’re immediately being marked as ‘Other.’”
‘A broader signal’
Transgender people make up less than 1% of the adult U.S. population, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post, but they have been the focus of state legislatures through bathroom bans and other bills, in Supreme Court cases that will decide the future of gender-affirming-care, and among elected officials. Soon after she was elected as the first openly transgender member of Congress in November, Democratic Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride was barred from using the bathroom that matches her gender identity in a change to chamber rules led by her colleague, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
Research published in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that anti-trans laws have led suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth ages 13 to 17 to increase between 7-72%. The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a 33% increase in volume for its crisis line on Inauguration Day compared to the weeks leading up to Trump being sworn in as President.
Read More: Anti-Trans Laws Linked to Increase in Trans and Nonbinary Youth Suicide Attempts
Jones says that Trump’s executive order will lead to exclusion—for instance, Trump has rescinded a Biden-era rule that allowed trans people to serve in the military, and The Hill reported that the President is expected to sign an executive order explicitly banning trans people from military service.
“Executive orders and laws not only are about the practical implementation and mechanics of implementing what those laws and orders are seeking to do—they also are about a broader signal to the country about what and who is acceptable and what and who are not acceptable,” Jones says. “I think that the thing that these executive orders are doing is they are saying that in this country, trans people are personae non gratae. And so consequently, it empowers individuals in authority to be able to exercise their discretion against trans people, if that’s what they want to do.”
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