Republican Senator Moves To End ‘Gender Neutral’ Passports, Restore ‘Sanity’ To International Travel
Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) is set to introduce legislation Tuesday that would officially end gender-neutral passports, restoring travel documents to a male-or-female-only designation.
The bill, titled the “Passport Sanity Act,” would lock in President Donald Trump’s policy requiring passports and visas to reflect biological sex. It blocks the State Department from issuing travel documents marked with an “X,” an option created under Joe Biden’s administration.
“Passports play a critical role in safeguarding our national security by confirming the true identity of individuals leaving and returning to the U.S. — which is why they must reflect factual, biological reality,” Marshall told The Daily Wire. “Congress should act quickly to enshrine the Passport Sanity Act into law, reinforcing the common-sense approach championed by President Trump and Secretary Rubio.”
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order requiring all federal travel documents to list only “male” or “female.” Following that order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio froze pending passport applications that attempted to use the “X” marker. “My Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male,” Trump said at the time.
Marshall’s bill would codify Trump’s directive, making it federal law that the State Department can only issue passports with an “M” or “F.” A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s order, but the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court. “The Constitution does not prohibit the government from defining sex in terms of an individual’s biological classification,” Solicitor General John Sauer argued.
The Biden administration began offering “X” passports in 2021, with Biden’s LGBTQ envoy Jessica Stern claiming that “humans do not always fit within a male or female category.” She said the policy was meant to advance “diversity of gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics” in official documents.
Trump officials have taken a starkly different approach, scrubbing federal forms of gender ideology and cracking down on taxpayer-funded medical facilities that perform transgender procedures on minors. Marshall’s measure is intended to backstop those reforms by ensuring future administrations cannot reinstate “X” passports without an act of Congress.