(From our partners @ TransOhio)

Transgender Americans—like all people—deserve accurate identity and travel documents. In fact, these legal documents are often necessary just to go about daily life free from harassment, discrimination, or violence.

The current administration unilaterally changed the rules and guidance on U.S. Passports, forbidding transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and Two-Spirit Americans from correcting their sex designation for the first time in American history. There were no clear guidelines before the year 2009; but in 2010, the U.S. State Department updated the policy to explicitly allow transgender people to obtain a U.S. passport that reflected their gender identity. In 2021, the policy was updated again to allow all applicants to self-select their sex designation with no need for further documentation. Under the newest guidelines—a result of an executive order, not policy change or new law—trans people are forced to carry U.S. Passports with the wrong sex marker.

The United States’ refusal to recognize transgender people is an erasure of their identity and an cold lack of concern for their unique needs and humanity.