The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently ruled in favor of the government’s removal of any genders other than male or female in passport identification. Said decision reverses prior flexibility for transgender and nonbinary passport applicants. The ruling overturns a lower court block against implementing the new limits on passport identification. This action follows the precedent set by a Supreme Court ruling issued in July 2025.

The decision reaffirms an Executive Order, which directed U.S. federal agencies to recognize only male and female genders on all official documents. Additionally, federal identification can only list a person’s birth gender. Transgender and non-binary applicants with passports listing their preferred gender identity are rendered invalid.

In its’ decision, the Supreme Court ruled such limitations are based on historical and biological fact and therefore don’t violate any equal protection principles. Said ruling ties into the larger debate surrounding gender identification. Since the start of 2025, the government policy has been increasingly less flexible regarding individuals who don’t identify with their birth gender.

This far from the first lower court block the Supreme Court overturned. In July of 2025, SCOTUS ruled that lower courts don’t have the authority to block federal policy on a national level. That ruling made many nation-wide judicial blocks against government policy invalid and gave the government a green to implement them.

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