The day after President Donald Trump returned to office, Lisa Suhay took her 21 -year -old daughter, Mellow, to a passport office in Norfolk, Virginia, where they live.
Obtaining a passport for Mellow, which is transgender, was urgent.
In a Executive order Trump signed last night, the president used a Narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of the genre. The order says that a person is male or female and rejects the idea that someone can make the transition of sex assigned to birth to another genre. The frame is in line with the opinions of many conservatives, but in disagreement with the main medical and policies groups under former President Joe Biden.
His family wants Mellow to leave the country if things became unbearable for transgender people in the United States as the federal government moves more and more to not recognize them.
“If the worst were worse and things were to threaten my life,” he said, “I would have some way out.”
Trump’s order of January 20, which questions the existence of transgender and non -binary people, created confusion and pain for Mellow and others looking for new passports, renewed or updated. A group of impacted people Challenged politics with a lawsuit filed on Friday in a federal court in Boston.
The State Department quickly ceased to issue travel documents with the gender marker “X” preferred by many non -binary people, who do not identify as strictly men or women. The department also stopped allowing people to change the genre that appears in their passport or obtains new ones that reflect their gender instead of their sex assigned to birth.
The requests that had already been submitted in search of changes in the gender marker were suspended. The State Department also replaced its website With information for travelers “LGBTQI+” only for “LGB”, eliminating any reference to transgender or intersex people.
Knowing the policy change, Mellow marked the “masculine” box, despite the fact that this disagrees with his life and driver’s license issued by the State.
“We had to oath the fact that the information we presented was true, even if what we had to do was sincere for ourselves,” said Mellow. “It was emotional because it was in a way to lie to yourself.”
His mother worries that Mellow does not grant a passport, or that he could create legal problems if her documents do not coincide or because she swore something that is not true.
The passport policy is among several actions that Trump has taken since he returned to the position that could suffocate the rights and legal recognition of transgender, intersex and non -binary people.
The same order that seeks to define the sexes to exclude them would also require transgender women in prison in men’s facilities. Additional orders could open the door to kick Transgender service members Outside the army, except for the use of federal taxpayers money to provide gender care that states to transgender people under 19 and keep transgender girls and women out of girls and women Sports contests.
The lawsuit filed on Friday by ACLU lawyers that challenges passport change argues that order discriminates to people based on their sex or transgender status, depriving their rights to equal protection, privacy and speech. He also maintains that abrupt policy change violates the requirement of a 60 -day warning and a period of comments.
Trump’s administration has said that policy would not affect existing unplanned passports.
Groups such as Garden State Equality, based in New Jersey, warned the transgender and non -binary members who could be at risk when they return to the US. Uu. After traveling abroad, particularly if their passport has the gender score “
Elise Flatland, mother of four children in the suburb of Kansas City, Olathe, Kansas, is still waiting to know if a passport has been approved for her 12 -year -old transgender son.
The family completed the application in December while requested passports to two of their other children. The others have arrived, but he has not done so. Flatland said it is essential to have the travel document so that the family can go to another country for attention to affirm the genre if it is not available in the United States.
He would also help his son in other ways. A Law of 2023 Kansas He left them unable to change their birth certificate, so it does not have a document issued by the government that reflects its gender. Having one could help respond to other sixth grade students who question their identity, more since Trump was chosen in November.
“There is definitely the feeling that everyone emboldens in their Anti-Trans attitudes, Anti-LGBTQ, and have no need to act politely in public,” said Flatland.
Anticipating a passport change, Ash Lazarus Orr, a defender of the transgender people of Virginia Occidental, sent an accelerated request to change the gender score in his passport of “F” to “M” days before Trump assumed the position.
But it was not processed until after the inauguration, and Orr does not expect the change to be made.
A complication for Orr is that the State Department has its current passport, which does not expire for several years, its birth certificate and marriage license. That has questioned some of the next international travel plans.
He said he hopes that his non -updated passport will be returned, so he can travel. “In the worst case, I could see this lost throughout the administration where I don’t have a passport,” said Orr.
Zaya Perysian, a 22 -year -old content creator who lives in Los Angeles, tried to change the gender brand in her passport once she learned of Trump’s passport policy.
She bought a plane ticket to Canada to serve as a basis for an accelerated service request. After an appointment in a passport office, I expected the change to be approved.
Days later, his new passport came by mail along with a letter explaining that the request had been “corrected” to man.
She said the problem is bigger than the travel document.
“They don’t want any trans person to feel validated,” he said in an interview. “They want it to be as it used to be, where we were seen like these creatures, and that we were like night stalkers.”
Both Orr and Perysian are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that seeks to stop politics.
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