Her Idaho driver’s license says she’s female. The U.S. State Department disagrees

When Cassidy Robertson got her renewed U.S. passport in the mail, she said she was more disappointed than surprised.

“The scoundrels,” she told the Idaho Statesman with a twinge of sarcasm, recalling the moment she flipped open the passport at the post office near her apartment in Austria in April. Staring back at her was a picture of herself – her long, blonde hair pulled into a tight bun, her expression serious – beside the letter “M,” for “male.”

Robertson, who grew up in Boise and has spent the past nine years in Graz, Austria, has been legally identified as female by state and federal government documents dating back a decade. Those include a Colorado birth certificate, an Idaho driver’s license and, until two months ago, her U.S. passport.

Like many trans people, Robertson said she has been in a “legal gray area” since President Donald Trump’s January order defining sex “at conception” and State Department policy requiring newly issued or reissued passports identify people by their biological sex at birth – though that policy was paused by an injunction Tuesday.

But in Robertson’s case, emails obtained by the Statesman showed that she hadn’t even finished applying for the renewed passport when the State Department stopped responding to her concern about the gender designation – and then issued her a new one anyway.

Robertson told the Statesman that her new passport put her work visa in jeopardy, made it more dangerous for her to travel, and complicated her relationship with her home country and state, where legislation targeting trans people has marched in step with the president’s order.

Idaho trans woman given ’M’ passport after Trump order

Robertson said she got an email from the State Department in April, roughly a month after she applied to renew her expiring passport, saying her application could not be accepted with the female marker she requested. It told her to “circle one” sex and resubmit the application, according to a copy of the email Robertson provided to the Statesman. But it had only the letter “M.”

“I responded that that was impossible, because all of my documents have been changed to female gender markers,” the 31-year-old social worker said.

She then got a separate email from the State Department, saying the department had received the information it had asked for and that the application was being reviewed, according to a copy of that email. Robertson’s email with concerns about her application went unanswered. A few weeks later, the passport came instead.

Because her work visa was also about to expire, Robertson brought her now-conflicting documents to a nearby Austrian citizenship office. Officials there were sympathetic to her case, she said.

“The lady who was handling my case just spun her chair around, yelled into the office behind her, like, ‘This lady’s passport says ‘M’ now, probably because of that Trump stuff,’ ” Robertson said. “And then the colleague just yelled, ‘What? Trump? Yeah, we don’t do anything’” based on the order.

The officials renewed her visa, keeping the female marker. For at least the next two years, she can stay and continue working.

Though she was “relieved” citizenship officials granted her the visa, she also knew she was in a precarious legal situation that could change “depending on the mood of whichever border guard or police or whatever I happen to encounter.”

Robertson said she already faces challenges while traveling, including invasive pat-downs and harassment, including before updating her passport to identify her as female.

“I’ve traveled under both passports, and … these sorts of situations are not unusual for trans people,” she said. “Having documents that align with the lived gender is one more protection.

“In a relatively calm situation, it can still be the difference between an extremely invasive and unpleasant pat-down or search and one that feels more respectful … and in any sort of situation where there’s the potential for escalation, it’s one more match on the fire.”

Robertson said traveling with documentation that doesn’t match her presentation could put her at risk of “accusations of lying” and presents a “very real danger.”

‘I come from there’: Trump order, Idaho laws target trans people

Robertson called Trump’s executive order a “concerted effort … to legislate trans people out of existence.”

“It is not a policy meant to address any material issue,” she said. “It is to harm people. … That is, for one thing, opposed to all of the best ideals that the United States professes to embody.”

She said the order and experience with her passport has complicated her relationship with her home.

“I would love to be unashamedly, unabashedly proud of the country that I come from, and I certainly think the landscape of Idaho will always be in my heart,” she said. “I come from there.”

But while she identifies with Idaho and recalls “quite a positive trans experience” growing up and coming out in Boise, lawmakers haven’t made it easy for people like her.

In 2020, Gov. Brad Little signed a law preventing transgender people from changing their birth certificates, defying a 2018 federal court order banning the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare from doing just that. The court maintained that the practice was unconstitutional despite the new law. This year, lawmakers tried and failed to pass a bill requiring changes to birth certificates to be listed on the certificate, according to the ACLU of Idaho.

In the past several years, legislators have prohibited trans women and girls from competing in female sports; barred public funds from being used for gender-affirming care; banned hormone therapy for minors; mandated students to use bathrooms based on their sex at birth; and defined gender as synonymous with biological sex. Some of those laws have been challenged in court, the Statesman reported.

Little’s office did not immediately respond to an email from the Statesman requesting comment. The Statesman attempted to reach the State Department’s press office, but did not immediately receive a response.

‘Looming threat’: Robertson, trans people across U.S. in limbo

Robertson said she heard stories of other trans people facing challenges with their passports, including a friend of hers whose request to change the marker on her passport was denied and two other individuals from northern Idaho and Minnesota with similar experiences to Robertson’s.

In February, the ACLU sued Trump and the State Department on behalf of seven people unable to obtain correct passports because of the executive order and the department’s new policy. One plaintiff, like Robertson, received a passport identifying her as “male” despite other legal documents identifying her as female. In April, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction requiring the department to issue six of the plaintiffs updated passports reflecting their gender identity. On Tuesday, the court expanded the injunction to apply to any passport holder, not only the plaintiffs, pausing the policy while the lawsuit plays out.

The ACLU of Idaho did not respond to an inquiry from the Statesman about the impacts of the executive order on trans people in Idaho.

In May, Robertson’s father, Mark Robertson, who lives in Boise, sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, calling on the congressman to help “expedite the immediate re-issuance of her passport” with a female marker. He told the Statesman by email that Simpson’s office responded Monday confirming that the letter had been received.

“As a dad, seeing my daughter impacted in a way, with a bull’s-eye placed on her now, it’s deeply concerning,” Mark Robertson said in a phone interview. “I want nothing but the best for my daughter, for her to be happy, healthy, (a) contributing member of the society, and this makes it really difficult for her to do that.”

Simpson’s office did not immediately respond to an email from the Statesman requesting comment.

Robertson said she is not sure of all the legal ramifications of holding conflicting IDs, and she is not traveling outside of Austria for the time being.

“This has the possibility to cause a lot of problems of a variety that I at least have no real sense of,” she said. “Like, what they could actually be, how far they could go, what the consequences could be.”

She said she’s “in a lucky position” – her visa is safe for now. Still, she said, it’s “a looming threat.”