President Trump signed a sweeping executive order Monday during his first hours in office recognizing only two sexes, male and female, and directing federal agencies to cease promotion of the concept of gender transition.
The order, which Trump signed from the Oval Office, is part of a broader campaign promise to rid the nation of what he has called “transgender insanity” and reverse diversity and inclusion initiatives instituted by the Biden administration.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said Monday in his inaugural address.
The executive order, which pledges to defend women from “gender ideology” and restore “biological truth to the federal government,” defines male and female not by physical or chromosomal differences but by reproductive function, which an administration official said was done intentionally.
“Chromosomes are characteristic of your sex, but the binary nature of sex, the reason you and I are all here, is deeper than that. It is the large reproductive cell, the small reproductive cell, working together in a binary function in order to perpetuate the species,” the official said.
Federal agencies should use the term “sex” instead of “gender” and remove statements, policies, and communications that “promote gender ideology,” according to the order. Agencies should give effect to the order’s definitions when applying their statutes, regulations and guidance.
The order also sets out to prevent transgender and gender non-conforming Americans from self-selecting their gender on official government documents like visas and passports, an option first made available by the State Department in 2021. The department in 2022 issued the first U.S. passport with an “unspecified” gender marker, denoted by a single letter X.
A Senate bill introduced by Vice President Vance in 2023, his first year in elected office, sought to prevent government documents from including more than two gender markers.
Monday’s order also directs the incoming Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to bar transgender people from government funded single-sex facilities that best align with their gender identity, including prisons, migrant housing ad domestic violence shelters. The order directs the Bureau of Prisons to halt the use of federal dollars for gender-affirming care, something several incarcerated trans people have successfully challenged in court.
The administration official told reporters Monday that the executive order would also mean Easter “is no longer going to be shared with” Transgender Day of Visibility, celebrated each year since 2009 on March 31. Both Easter, the date of which varies each year, and Trans Day of Visibility fell on March 31 last year, angering Republicans including Trump, who in turn said Election Day would be referred to as “Christian Visibility Day.”
Trump’s executive order also tasks the attorney general with providing guidance on how the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers from discrimination because of their gender identity or sexuality, may be applied to other federal statutes.
The Biden administration used the ruling to support its interpretation of Title IX, which would have expanded protections for transgender students, and a handful of other laws dealing with discrimination. A federal judge this month struck down the Biden administration’s Title IX changes, ruling in part that they relied on a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision.
Monday’s order also blocks requirements at government facilities and workplaces that transgender people be referred to using pronouns that match their gender identity, which Trump and administration officials have argued violates the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and religion.
The order’s language mirrors largely conservative talking points on sex and gender, namely that the two are indistinguishable and unchangeable. In a 2023 letter to U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos, Vance and newly confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote, “Biology determines gender, not subjective belief.”
Government agencies “should not lend credence or official weight to a false concept like gender identity,” the then-senators wrote.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly claimed that the concept of gender transition did not exist until very recently, though he celebrated the inclusion of transgender women in his Miss Universe pageant as early as 2012.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2016, Trump said he disagreed with a North Carolina law barring trans people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity and told Time Magazine in December that the nation should focus on more pressing issues.
Monday’s executive order does not explicitly address access to gender-affirming care, an umbrella term referring to a broad range of interventions to support individuals whose gender identity does not match their sex at birth. Trump has pledged to ban transition-related care for minors and hand down harsh penalties to individuals and institutions that provide care to children and adolescents under 18.
A senior administration official told The Free Press late Sunday that the order “is the first of many” that will zero in on trans rights.
“I would expect that anything the president said he would do on the trail regarding these issues, he’s going to be fulfilling those promises,” the official said.
In addition to issuing his own, Trump on Monday rescinded 78 of former President Biden’s executive orders, including orders to strengthen nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans and allow transgender people to serve openly in the military. Trump barred transgender troops from serving in 2017 through a series of social media posts.
Some House Democrats are looking to thwart another trans military ban with a bill that faces near-impossible odds in the GOP-controlled Congress. House Republicans last week passed legislation to ban transgender student-athletes from competing on women’s sports teams, another goal of the new administration.
Trump’s executive orders will likely face legal challenges in the months and years ahead. The ACLU has pledged to take the administration to court “wherever we can.”
Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney who last month became the first transgender person to argue before the Supreme Court, wrote in an Instagram post that Trump’s orders “do not and cannot change the law.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said Monday’s and other planned executive orders “serve no other purpose than to hurt our families and our communities” and stressed that they would not take effect immediately.
“Our community has fought for decades to ensure that our relationships are respected at work, that our identities are accepted at school, and that our service is honored in the military. Any attack on our rights threatens the rights of any person who doesn’t fit into the narrow view of how they should look and act,” Robinson said in a statement. “The incoming administration is trying to divide our communities in the hope that we forget what makes us strong. But we refuse to back down or be intimidated.”
Janson Wu, senior director of state advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization, said Trump’s executive orders “will cause harm,” especially for young people.
“We know that many people are feeling afraid, or even confused, by what certain actions today and in the coming days mean for our community,” Wu said. “I want to remind everyone that we are prepared for whatever lies ahead — and will continue to protect and care for each other now, just as we always have.”
