The U.S. will only recognize people’s sexes as assigned at birth on passports and other federal-issued documents following an executive order signed Monday by President Donald Trump.
Since 2022, U.S. citizens have been able to select “X” as their gender marker on passports, visas, and Global Entry cards.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said during his inaugural address Monday.
Several other countries, including Denmark, Malta, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, and New Zealand, offer a non-binary gender marker for identification purposes.
The order, called “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” requires that the term “sex” be used, rather than “gender.” It says identification must be described as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
Limited Impact
The order, which was criticized by Human Rights Campaign, is unlikely to have a major impact on the travel industry.
The Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law estimated that only about 16,700 non-binary LGBTQ+ people may request passports with X gender markers per year.
That represents just 1.4% of the U.S. nonbinary population, which the think tank estimates is approximately 1.2 million U.S. adults.
Some non-binary and transgender people had already been reluctant to use the ‘X’ gender marker, because of fears of discrimination when traveling, or difficulty booking tickets to fly with various airlines.
It was not immediately clear what impact Trump’s decision on gender identification might have on foreign visitation to the U.S., such as travelers interested in attending the World Pride 2025 sporting event that Washington, D.C., will host in May.
Trump’s First 100 Days
The executive order about passports and other official documents (such as applications for citizenship) was one of a blizzard of executive orders.
Another was a potential reinstatement of the travel ban that targeted majority Muslim countries during Trump’s last presidency.
Skift will cover how Trump’s actions in his first 100 days in office might impact travel.
In survey before the election, Skift asked travel leaders what they thought Trump’s impact on the sector would be. About two out of three respondents expressed neutral to positive sentiments.
