WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Travelers will no longer be able to indicate a third gender marker other than male or female to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), beginning this week.
As of October 14, commercial airlines must now log international travelers’ sex as male or female, instead of a “non-binary” option indicated as “X,” chosen by some passengers as enabled by former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2022. This “non-binary” option was introduced for all official government documents.
“If the travel document presented by a traveler for an international flight to or from the United States has a sex indicator other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ or does not otherwise indicate the sex of the traveler, the carrier or the traveler should select either ‘M’ or ‘F’,” reads the CBP announcement.
CBP’s document announcing the change cites President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order affirms that sex is immutable, stating that the Trump 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.”
The Trump administration previously attempted to invalidate travel documents with a “non-binary” gender marker but was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Massachusetts in June.
Justice Department attorneys said in response, “Private citizens cannot force the government to use inaccurate sex designations on identification documents that fail to reflect the person’s biological sex — especially not on identification documents that are government property and an exercise of the President’s constitutional and statutory power to communicate with foreign governments.”
Foreign travelers’ “choice of sex” will not impact their admission into the U.S., CBP told The Guardian. It is unclear whether airlines will make efforts to verify that travelers’ indicated sex matches their actual sex.
