Transgender Americans sue over Trump passport policy

Seven transgender or non-binary Americans sued the Trump administration Friday over its new policy preventing people from obtaining passports with sex designations that match their gender identities.

The transgender Americans, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claim the policy runs afoul of constitutional protections against sex discrimination and violates their rights to privacy and free speech.

"The Passport Policy...is motivated by impermissible animus," ACLU lawyer Jessie Rossman wrote in the complaint. "It cannot be justified under any level of judicial scrutiny, and it wrongly seeks to erase the reality that transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist today as they always have."

The new passport rule stemmed from an executive order Trump signed his first day back in office that vowed to restore "biological truth" to the federal government.

The president ordered the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to implement changes requiring that government-issued identification documents "accurately reflect" the holder's sex, defined in the binary: "male" or "female." The order defines male and female not by physical or chromosomal differences but by reproductive function.

Reid Solomon-Lane, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement distributed by the ACLU that he's lived "virtually my entire adult life" as a man.

“Everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man,” Solomon-Lane said.

"If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety," he added.

The Hill requested comment from the White House.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts, where three of the plaintiffs live. It adds to a deluge of legal challenges filed in courts across the country challenging Trump's sweeping directives to reshape the government.