Louie figured he was taking a gamble when he submitted his passport application after President Trump's inauguration.
He had a passport, which was valid for another two years. But at the end of December, a New York state court approved Louie's request to change his name and gender marker. As a result, he needed a new passport — regardless of who was in office.
Louie asked NPR to identify him by his first name because he fears harassment and retaliation at work.
Louie, 24, identifies as transmasculine. At the end of 2024 and early January, he changed his driver's license and Social Security card to reflect the female-to-male gender marker update. It went smoothly, he told NPR.
The trouble started in January, when he submitted his application for a new passport — just hours after Trump took office on Jan. 20.
The same day, Trump issued an executive order stating that the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female. That led the State Department to eliminate the X gender as an option and to suspend its policy allowing transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to update the sex field of their passports.
This executive order has upended the lives of individuals in prisons, at schools, seeking health care and in sports. It's now disrupting the lives of some trans, nonbinary and intersex people when they travel.
An estimated 1.3 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender or gender nonconforming, and as many as 5 million Americans may be intersex, according to a brief published last month from the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law School that researches sexual orientation and gender identity.
Those who spoke to NPR for this story say the policy change is yet another example of the Trump administration's persecution of the LGBTQ+ community by creating new barriers in their daily lives.
The changes resulting from the executive order also mean that the gender identity of trans, nonbinary and intersex people won't be reflected in official documents, they say, forcing them to "out" themselves every time they present their passports — heightening their distress and fear and adding unpredictable logistical and safety challenges for travel and even everyday life.
"As a transgender person in this country … this fight for our freedom, our recognition, our ability to just live our lives, this isn't new," says Westley Ebling, a trans man who faced issues getting a new passport recently. "But this scale of attacks is just horrid. It has been a really hard time, to just feel that a country is so against you just for trying to live."
Passport applications thrown into disarray
About a week after Trump signed the order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suspended passport applications of Americans who chose X as their gender or who were trying to update their document's gender marker. Now, under new policies, the State Department will only issue passports that say male or female and that match the applicant's sex at birth.
The State Department did not respond to NPR's questions about the new policies and their enforcement.
NPR spoke to LGBTQ+ advocates as well as seven people who identify as trans, nonbinary or intersex who have been directly impacted by the changed passport policy or who have put plans to apply for a new passport and to travel on hold as a result of the confusing new rules.
In Louie's case, he received a new passport with the correct name change. But the gender marker was still "female," like his old passport. Louie says he wasn't surprised, given the State Department's policy changes, but is still upset and frustrated and unsure what it means for him. (Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer shared on TikTok that she also received a new passport that reflected her sex assigned at birth, not her current gender marker, which is on her other documents.)
Louie is now rethinking his international travel destinations and is concerned about how even interactions in the U.S. with law enforcement, for example, could become a problem when his passport lists one gender and his other legal documents another.
Trump's passport policy already faces at least one federal lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. It argues that the executive order and passport policy are unlawful, unconstitutional and "unmoored from scientific and medical reality."
The American Medical Association supports policies "that allow for a sex designation or change of designation on all government IDs to reflect an individual's gender identity, as reported by the individual." Designating sex as either male or female only fails to factor in "the medical spectrum of gender identity," risks stifling an individuals' self-expression and contributes to marginalization, the organization says.
What were the old passport policies?
The ability for people to change the sex field on their passports from male to female or vice versa has been allowed since 2010, including through the first Trump administration.
To qualify for that change, a doctor had to certify that the applicant was being treated for gender transition. In 2021, the State Department allowed people to make those changes without doctor certification and permitted applicants to select a third gender option, X, on their passport — after years of litigation. Thousands of gender X passports are believed to be in circulation now, but the State Department has not given a specific number.
Many countries such as Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand allow the "X" designation on their passports. Dozens of states already allow residents to update their driver's licenses to reflect their gender identity, with "X" being a gender marker option in 22 states and the District of Columbia. At least 16 states and D.C. allow an X gender marker option for updated birth certificates.
With the new passport policy in place, legal and advocacy groups say they are hearing from people like Louie who have received passports with the wrong gender markers and some whose passports and other legal documents are being held by the State Department.
Passports withheld, questions unanswered
All of these issues have left people like Westley Ebling with passport applications in a state of limbo, with no word from the State Department, and important documents, like old passports and birth certificates, withheld.
Ebling, a 26-year-old trans man in Washington, D.C., submitted his passport renewal application with a gender marker change from female to male on Jan. 15. The application was received on Jan. 22, shortly after Trump issued his executive order.
Ebling wondered what this would mean for him, and when he contacted the office of his congressional representative, Democratic Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, he was told passport applications with gender changes were being suspended indefinitely.
"That's all the information I have," Ebling says. So for now, he doesn't have a new passport and his old one hasn't been returned. He and his partner have put travel plans on hold, he says.
Intersex Americans face particular challenges
The policy changes are having a profound impact on intersex people — those born with genitalia, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don't fit typical definitions for males or females — says Erika Lorshbough, the executive director of interACT, a nonprofit that advocates for the legal and civil rights of people with intersex traits.
Under Trump's Jan. 20 executive order — titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" — the federal government now views "female" as meaning "a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and male as "a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
Intersex people, by definition, cannot fall into these categories, Lorshbough says.
"For folks in the intersex community, visibility has always been an issue. Every time you're trying to define sex in these perfectly binary terms, you're going to impact intersex people who, by definition, don't present with perfectly binary sex," Lorshbough says.
Some intersex people are assigned a sex at birth that doesn't match their development later in life, Lorshbough says. The addition of the X gender marker as an option on official documents helped intersex people feel better represented, she says.
So, what happens to intersex people looking to get or update a passport now?
It's unclear for Jennifer Sensiba, who lives in New Mexico.
Sensiba, 40, is intersex and was assigned male at birth.
"It became obvious when I was a teenager and young adult that I wasn't actually male. This was fine by me, because I never felt right in a male gender role," Sensiba wrote in an email to NPR. "I was often mistaken for a transgender man, and was sometimes accused of being a woman pretending to be a man in those days."
Sensiba eventually changed how she identifies, changed her name legally and updated her gender marker on her driver's license and other IDs.
But her birth certificate is still unchanged, so she has "mixed paperwork," as she calls it. As a young adult, Sensiba had a passport under her old name, but it has long since expired. She'd have to apply all over again for a new passport.
"From what I've been reading, if there's any discrepancy in paperwork, they go with the birth certificate," she said.
She's tried to get answers from her local congressman, but has heard nothing. The fact that these policy decisions have pulled her and other intersex people in a black hole, shows the federal government is "trying to regulate an issue that they know nothing about," she says.
Despite the chaos, uncertainty and fear people are feeling in the face of these changes, many say they will continue to live their lives as they have for years.
"These laws, executive orders, attempts to legislate trans people out of existence won't work," Louie, the trans man in New York, says. "We've won our rights over decades and we've existed before we were legally recognized by the state and we will continue to do so regardless of that."
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