One of President Trump’s first-day executive orders proclaimed that “women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.” It sounds simple, but translating it into action across a vast federal bureaucracy won’t be.
As social norms around gender have grown more fluid in recent years, the federal government in a variety of settings has moved to accommodate those who don’t identify with their sex at birth. People applying for travel documents or filing employment discrimination claims can check off an X instead of male or female.
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Lawyers say that change will be a recipe for confusion, given that most states allow people to change the gender on both their birth certificates and driver’s licenses. It is possible that individuals could end up with conflicting government identification documents that use different gender markers, a headache when completing tasks such as opening a new bank account.
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“If you’re insisting that a person be identified with a gender marker that is different from who they are, how they live, how they appear, what’s the legitimate government purpose for requiring that discordance?” said Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, a LGBTQ-rights organization.
