BOSTON: A federal judge held on Friday that the Trump administration’s policy of refusing to issue passports to transgender and nonbinary Americans that reflect their gender identities is likely unconstitutional, but she declined to block it nationwide.
US district judge Julia Kobick in Boston issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the enforcement of the policy against six of the seven transgender and nonbinary people who sued to challenge the policy adopted by the US department of state at Republican President Donald Trump’s direction.
Kobick said the passport policy and a related executive order signed by Trump that directed the change discriminated on the basis of sex and sprang from an “animus” toward transgender Americans that violated the equal protection principles safeguarded by the US Constitution’s fifth amendment.