Overview
- The court granted the administration’s emergency request to stay a nationwide injunction, permitting immediate enforcement while appeals proceed.
- The State Department policy requires passports to reflect sex assigned at birth and abolishes the nonbinary 'X' marker and self-selection adopted under Biden.
- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, warning of imminent, concrete harm to transgender and nonbinary applicants.
- U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick had previously found the rule likely discriminatory and issued a classwide injunction that the 1st Circuit declined to pause.
- The administration argued the injunction intruded on presidential foreign-affairs authority, and the order said listing sex at birth attests to a historical fact rather than imposing unequal treatment.