Supreme Court asked to allow birth-certificate sex rule on passports

The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a policy requiring passports to list a holder's sex as male or female based on the designation on their original birth certificate, seeking to lift a lower court block that now allows transgender and nonbinary people to choose M, F or X on their passports. The filing asks the high court to put on hold a Massachusetts federal judge's injunction that has required the State Department to issue passports matching applicants' gender identity while litigation proceeds.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in the emergency application that the government cannot be compelled to use what it considers inaccurate sex designations on official documents. "Private citizens cannot force the government to use inaccurate sex designations on identification documents that fail to reflect the person's biological sex," the filing said, adding that passports are government property and an exercise of the president's authority to communicate with foreign governments.

The dispute stems from a January executive order in which President Trump directed federal agencies to recognize only male and female designations based...