The Trump administration has issued the requirement of exclusively male and female gender markers on passports.
In 2021, under the Biden administration, the U.S. State Department began allowing the “X” marker on passports in place of an “F” or “M” on passports. This allowed for inclusivity towards non-binary, gender non-conforming, and intersex individuals by giving a non-cisgender option.
Trump has been attacking the non-binary and trans community openly and fervently since the beginning of his administration, having declared that nonbinary and trans people “don’t exist.”
According to Advocate, This new rule, issued by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) dictated that these “X” marked passports will not be recognized. This regulation requires that carriers update their Advance Passenger Information System, or APIS—an apparatus that collects data on all passengers and crew members and sends it directly to CBP.
According to the regulation, “CBP systems had previously accepted characters other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ without returning an error response or requiring resubmission,” however, “Effective July 14, 2025, air carriers will have an informed compliance period of 90-days where values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the sex field will not require resubmission. After the compliance period, APIS will begin returning a resubmit or ‘X response’ which indicates insufficient information requiring resubmission, when values other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ are submitted in the sex field.”
This affirms that since October 12, the alternative gender marker has no longer been able to be submitted to airlines. According to The New York Times, this rule doesn’t affect passengers’ ability to fly, it just changes the data collected.
The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, has been attempting to fight back. This past June, they issued an injunction which required the State Department to resume issuing gender-affirming markers on passports. Earlier this October, ACLU attorneys asked the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s attempted halt of this issuing.
Unfortunately, because CBP is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, it has authority over all international flights in and out of the United States, and whatever they say, regardless of how bigoted, goes.
