Trump Trans Passport Policy Block Remains After Bid to Dissolve

A policy requiring sex listed on passports to be based on a person’s birth certificate remains blocked for a nationwide class of transgender people, a federal judge ruled Friday in response to the Trump administration’s request to dissolve an injunction.

The government hasn’t carried its burden to show that the US Supreme Court’s June holding in United States v. Skrmetti undermines the district court’s ruling that the policy discriminates on the basis of sex, Judge Julia E. Kobick said in a minute order. The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts denied Trump’s motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction or alternatively stay the injunction.

The US government hasn’t “argued that Skrmetti or any other change in law disturbs the court’s independent conclusion that PI class members are likely to succeed on their claim that the executive order and passport policy are based on unconstitutional animus toward transgender Americans,” Kobick said.

The Trump administration appealed the ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, where it’s already challenging Kobick’s injunction.

The district court ruled in April that six of the plaintiffs adequately demonstrated they’re likely to experience irreparable harm absent an injunction and the balance of the equities and the public interest favor an injunction. Kobick then modified and expanded the injunction in June to cover classes of transgender or non-binary people seeking either an “M,” “F,” or “X” sex designation that is different from the sex assigned to them.

But following the Supreme Court’s holding in Skrmetti just a day following the expansion, the Trump administration argued that a “significant change in law that warrants dissolution of the preliminary injunction,” Kobick wrote. The high court ruled that a Tennessee law banning minors from receiving certain treatments for gender dysphoria didn’t have to stand up to strict scrutiny and satisfied “rational basis” scrutiny.

But the administration failed to show that it was likely to succeed in its dissolution quest, that it faced the threat of irreparable injury, or that either the equities or public interest tilted in its favor, the order said.

“Members of the PI Class remain likely to experience a constitutional harm absent preliminary injunctive relief,” Kobick said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Covington & Burling LLP represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Orr v. Trump, D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-10313, minute order 7/11/25.