Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered the US State Department to immediately suspend all applications for passports with the “X” gender marker, a third option introduced by the agency under the Biden administration for nonbinary, intersex and other gender nonconforming persons.
An internal email first reported by The Guardian documented the move. It orders the suspension of any passport applications for persons who did not mark either “male” or “female” in the gender section. It also identifies biological sex as the term that will be used going forward, noting: “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”
