By President Donald Trump on Monday signed executive orders proclaiming that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs inside federal agencies.
In a phone call Monday morning before Trump’s swearing-in, senior White House officials detailed both orders, grouping them under the Trump administration’s wider “restoring sanity” agenda.
The gender order states that it 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.”
It requires that the federal government use the term “sex” instead of “gender,” and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong,” the order reads. “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.”
“The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system,” it continues. “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
In 2022, the Biden administration allowed U.S. citizens to be able to select the gender-neutral “X” as a marker on their passports. On Tuesday, a page on the State Department website that had previously included instructions on updating passport gender markers was no longer accessible, instead redirecting to a general U.S. passports page.
The gender order also prevents taxpayer funds from being used for gender-transition health care and mandates “privacy in intimate spaces” to ensure that single-sex spaces, such as prisons and rape shelters, are designated by sex and not gender identity.
Lastly, it directs federal agencies to rescind all guidance documents inconsistent with the gender order, including those titled: “White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality,” “Supporting Transgender Youth in School” and “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families.”
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Trump campaigned on rolling back protections for transgender and nonbinary people and emphasized the issue in television advertisements, including a commercial that aired frequently in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, where Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the most notable ad said.
The second order will end what it describes as the federal government’s “discriminatory” DEI policies, positions and offices within 60 days, singling out environmental justice programs and equity-related grants.
The new administration will hold monthly meetings with the deputy secretaries of key agencies to “hear reports on the prevalence and the economic and social costs of DEI,” the order states.
In a phone call before the DEI order was signed, a senior White House official said it was “very fitting” that it was to be signed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because the “order is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”
In recent years, Trump and conservatives have assailed DEI initiatives across American society, characterizing them as discriminatory.
Trump referred to the orders in his inaugural address Monday, saying in part that his administration would resist what he described as efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He added that his administration would “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”
The proponents of DEI in American society have argued that such initiatives are essential to make companies, schools, government agencies and other institutions more racially and socially inclusive.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to power, major corporations, such as Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart, have announced they are ending some or all of their diversity practices.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said there are questions about exactly which DEI programs will be ended. She said the group is ready to take any action to prevent discrimination, including challenging the order in court.
Lee said a push to prohibit “anything dealing with efforts to address inequality” would be a “real setback in terms of racial justice advancement.”
She added that “any incoming president can set the policies for the federal administration” but that it would be disconcerting if it becomes permissible for employers or the government to “discriminate on the basis of race or sex.”
LGBTQ legal advocates react
Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization that litigates on behalf of LGBTQ Americans, said she expects her organization and others to sue the administration over the executive actions.
“The president can’t, with a wave of a pen, change the reality of who people are and the fact that we as a community of people exist,” Pizer said. “We have equal protection rights, just like anybody else does.”
Another lawyer and legal expert in the LGBTQ community said that even though Trump’s executive order on gender identity will surely be challenged in court, the administration can implement the order and, in some cases, make immediate changes.
The expert, who asked not to be named to speak candidly about the executive order, noted that prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters could immediately begin moving transgender people into spaces that align with their birth sexes as opposed to their gender identities. That means, for example, trans women serving time in women’s prisons could in short order be moved to male prisons.
The lawyer also said transgender Americans — especially those who have X as their gender marker on federal documents like passports — should exercise caution when they leave the country, as they could have challenges re-entering the United States and could even be held in detention by border agents.
If a Customs and Border agent can’t enter a person’s X gender marker into the system to allow the person back into the United States, that could mean the person would remain in Customs and Border Protection custody “until they can work with the Department of State to get an alternate ID issued,” the lawyer said.
Still, some changes — such as the way agencies handle health care for transgender Americans or the way the Department of Housing and Urban Development protects trans tenants from being evicted by landlords — could take longer to implement because agencies will have to go through a process that takes months or even years to change the rules governing them.
In some cases, the legal expert said, “it’ll take time for the agencies to issue Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, go through the comments, which is part of what they’re legally obligated to do, and respond to any deficiencies, and then publish a final rule.”
Once the anticipated legal challenges order are filed, courts could block implementation of the order by issuing injunctions. But judges could also decide to allow the order to be implemented as challenges work their way through the courts, including to the Supreme Court, which could side with the Trump administration.
