Anti-trans Trump policy raises travel, safety concerns for WA residents

Kline, a 31-year-old transgender woman in Seattle, thought she had dodged disaster when she held her renewed passport that the U.S. Department of State had mailed to her last week.

The 31-year-old software developer said she rushed to apply to renew her passport in February, about a month after President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring the U.S. would recognize only two sexes – male and female. The Jan. 20 order also declared that any identification documents issued by the federal government, including passports and visas, must reflect the holder’s sex assigned at birth.

In the wake of the order, Kline heard that some transgender people, especially those who requested the gender-neutral “X” marker, had seen their passport renewal applications denied or stuck in limbo. But seeing her own passport slip out of an envelope eased Kline’s concerns.

Her relief was short lived.

Kline’s girlfriend texted her Saturday morning to say she had heard some transgender people were receiving passports with an incorrect gender. Kline, who asked for only her last name to be used out of privacy concerns and fear of being targeted, said she looked closely at her renewed passport for the first time and felt a wave of fear, anxiety and devastation crash over her.

Her passport said “M,” for male, something no other forms of her identification, including her Maryland state birth certificate, Washington state enhanced driver’s license and U.S. Global Entry card, have listed for almost 10 years.

“I just broke down,” Kline said on Friday. “I thought I was past this.”

Transgender people whose U.S. passports don’t match their other forms of federal and state identification are facing a slew of potential issues because of the new federal policy, including job discrimination, travel complications and the risk of verbal or physical harassment after being outed as transgender, Kline said. And even as organizations and attorneys across the U.S. fight the policy, some transgender people, including Kline, worry it is a harbinger of what’s to come.

“I’m Jewish and I grew up learning about the Holocaust,” Kline said. “I know we’re not going to have a holocaust tomorrow, but it’s the direction we’re going.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the organization’s Massachusetts branch and the law firm Covington & Burling filed a federal lawsuit Feb. 7 on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary people who were not able to get passports matching their gender identity because of the executive order. The lawsuit alleges the policy violates people’s right to privacy and travel, and illegally compels speech from transgender, nonbinary and intersex people in violation of their First Amendment rights.

A federal judge in Massachusetts is expected to decide Tuesday whether to grant a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the order, federal court records show.

A dozen state attorneys general across the U.S., including Washington’s, sent a letter last week to the State Department in opposition to the order, saying it could cause transgender and nonbinary people psychological harm and create barriers to travel and resources due to confusion between state and federal forms of identification.

The confusion could be greatest for residents of states like Washington, where people can get state-issued identifications using the gender neutral “X” marker and apply to change their sex designation from male to female, or vice versa, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office said in a statement about the joint letter on Monday.

The mismatched documents could also create a barrage of issues for people trying to access federal resources, like cash or food assistance. And they could prevent people from getting housing and health insurance, and make it harder to vote or register to vote, according to the joint letter.

“These discriminatory rules would add confusion and costs for taxpayers merely to satisfy the president’s fixation on dehumanizing an entire class of people,” Brown said in his office’s statement on Monday.

Brown’s office had not received a response from the State Department by Monday. Nina Jenkins, a spokesperson for the office, said they are working with state agencies to ensure they are continuing to provide documents in accordance with state law.

Asked for more information, a State Department spokesperson confirmed the agency will enforce the executive order and said “travel document security is vital to our national security.”

People whose passports currently list “X” as their sex will be allowed to use those documents until the expiration date, but must designate female or male – whichever they were assigned at birth – when applying to renew their passport or get a new one, according to the State Department.

The order does not change policies in states like Washington, where people can elect for their state-issued IDs to carry an M, F or X. That includes Washington’s enhanced driver’s license and REAL ID-compliant identification, which will be mandatory for traveling domestically by plane in the U.S. starting May 7.

But advocates for transgender and nonbinary people say that hasn’t eased concerns for those who worry about what may come next from the Trump administration.

The ACLU of Washington has received 40 calls from people with questions about passports and gender markers on their IDs, said Caedmon Magboo Cahill, the director of the organization’s policy advocacy department.

The organization has advised transgender and nonbinary people to speak to an attorney about their situation, and said people can still make sure their passport has a recent and accurate photo. But those efforts still “won’t erase the harm of this hateful and nonsensical policy,” Cahill said.

The Gender Justice League, a Seattle-based nonprofit, had received 307 calls for help from people concerned about passport issues by Wednesday, and more than 1,400 calls since Trump’s inauguration – more than the organization had received in the previous three years combined, said its executive director, Danni Askini. The organization’s five employees and about 30 volunteers have been working nonstop to respond to the calls for help, she said.

“I’m not sleeping,” Askini said. “All of us feel very spread thin and our community is in crisis.”

Beyond increasing the risk of harassment, physical harm and barriers to accessing resources for transgender and nonbinary people, Askini said, the order could create momentum for “future nefarious purposes” in the country. She pointed to a Texas bill introduced by state Rep. Tom Oliverson this month that would charge people with “gender identity fraud” if they presented a document to their employer or a government worker that had a different sex than the one they were assigned at birth.

A law like that one, if passed, would make it a crime for transgender and nonbinary Washingtonians who have changed the sex designation on their state identifications to present those documents in Texas, Askini said. And she is worried the Trump administration will try unrolling a similar policy nationwide.

“Every time you’re asked for your papers, you’re immediately outed as a trans person,” she said. “The federal government should not have the right to do that.”

The executive order has drawn some “disturbing parallels to the 1930s” in Nazi Germany, Askini said, when there was a system for visually identifying subjugated groups: Jewish people wore badges in the shape of stars, lesbians wore a black triangle and gay men wore a pink triangle. Forcing transgender people to use identification documents that out them as transgender is eerily similar, she said.

Trump has issued a slew of other anti-trans executive orders since Jan. 20, including directives seeking to ban transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports and transgender kids from using Medicare or Medicaid to pay for gender-affirming health care. A Seattle-based human rights organization sued the administration last month over its ban on transgender people serving in the military.

By attacking “every facet of trans people’s lives,” the Trump administration aims to force transgender and nonbinary people to withdraw from society, or put them at risk of being harmed by others or harming themselves, Askini said.

“The overall cacophony of all of these policies is to erase trans people, to make us legally unintelligible and to subject us to more violence,” she said.

Amid the barrage of anti-trans policies, there are still reasons to hope and work to be done, Askini said.

The Gender Justice League is supporting the ACLU in its lawsuit and has been hosting legal clinics in and around Seattle to help people update their name and gender markers on identifying documents like birth certificates and state IDs. And Askini said she is hopeful a judge will block Trump’s executive order at Tuesday’s hearing.

Kline said she is also hopeful about an injunction, and plans to submit a passport data correction form the moment she learns whether the federal judge has temporarily blocked the executive order. She also said she is grateful to live in Washington where many will “fight tooth and nail” to protect the rights of transgender and nonbinary people.

“I think this community has shown that the queer community, but in particular the trans and nonbinary community, that we are not going to go away and we will not be quiet,” she said. “Quite the opposite.”