Sen Roger Marshall pushes for bill to restrict passports to male or female, scrap gender ‘X’
WASHINGTON, DC: Senator Roger Marshall has introduced legislation that would eliminate gender-neutral designations on US passports, calling the move necessary to restore “sanity” to international travel.
On Tuesday, September 30, 2025, Marshall announced the Passport Sanity Act, a bill designed to codify former President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring passports to identify holders as either male or female.
The proposed legislation directly challenges the current State Department policy, which allows Americans to apply for passports with the gender marked as “X.”
The full contents of the bill can be read here.
Roger Marshall says passports must reflect ‘biological reality’
“Passports play a critical role in safeguarding our national security by confirming the true identity of individuals leaving and returning to the US, which is why they must reflect factual, biological reality,” Marshall said.
He urged Congress to “act quickly” in adopting the bill, praising Trump and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio for supporting a commonsense approach.
The legislation would permanently block the Secretary of State from issuing a passport, passport card, or consular report of birth abroad that includes the unspecified (X) gender designation and require applications for these documents to include only male or female.
By doing so, the bill would effectively reverse one of the first changes made under former President Joe Biden, who authorized gender-neutral passports in 2021.
Legal battles over Trump’s policy
The debate over gender-neutral passports has already played out in federal court.
A federal judge in Boston, Julia Kobick, an appointee of former President Biden, issued a preliminary injunction in April halting enforcement of Trump’s earlier executive order that froze all “X” passport applications.
Judge Kobick ruled that the policy discriminated against transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, calling it arbitrary and rooted in “irrational prejudice.”
Her ruling blocked the measure not only for the plaintiffs in the case but for all similar applicants nationwide.
The Trump administration appealed the injunction before leaving office, with Justice Department lawyers arguing that private citizens cannot compel the government to issue identification documents that “fail to reflect the person’s biological sex.”
Biden reversed Trump’s order in 2021
When former president Biden took office, his administration swiftly overturned Trump’s freeze and introduced gender-neutral passports as part of a broader policy to expand recognition of LGBTQ+ Americans. Since then, applicants have been able to choose “X” as a gender option when applying for or renewing passports.
For Marshall and other conservatives, the policy is symbolic of what they see as unnecessary “woke” experiments that compromise security. For LGBTQ+ advocates, however, the option represents dignity, inclusion, and constitutional equal protection.
These changes sparked debates between conservative critics and LGBTQ+ advocates.
What comes next for the Passport Sanity Act?
Marshall’s bill will face an uphill battle in the Senate, where Democrats hold enough votes to block passage.
Still, Republicans say the legislation underscores their commitment to rolling back Biden-era policies and reinforcing Trump’s executive orders.
The debate also comes at a politically charged moment, as immigration, security, and identity policies remain central issues in the 2026 election cycle.
With Trump openly backing efforts like Marshall’s, the push to end gender-neutral passports is expected to remain a talking point well into next year.
