The United States can not refuse a passport for refusing to choose their sex, says the judge

FILE: Dana Zzyym, of Fort Collins, Colorado, discusses the arguments put forward at a hearing on the lawsuit requiring that people choose a sex to obtain a passport outside the US federal court house. Denver.

(AP)

DENVER – A federal judge said Wednesday that US authorities can not refuse a passport application from an intersexual resident of Colorado, solely because of a refusal to choose a man or a woman because of their sex.

The various explanations given by the US State Department for rejecting the request were not reasonable, US District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said in his decision, forcing him to overturn the decision as "arbitrary and capricious".

The decision is limited, but advocates said they hoped it would lead to expanded gender choices in federal identification.

Dana Zzyym, born with ambiguous physical sex characteristics and identified as a non-binary gender, and not as a man or a woman, sued in 2015. Zzyym had applied for "X" as a gender marker on a passport application .

The judge in 2016 ordered the State Department to reconsider. Zzyym submitted a new application and refused to select one of the options proposed in the passport application, believing that it would be false.

The ministry again rejected the application in 2017.

Jackson has rejected the department's explanation for rejecting the passport, and fears that this will complicate the process of verifying the applicant's identity and determining eligibility based on federal, state and local databases. local.

The agency can legally reject passport applications for good reason, but "adherence to a series of internal policies that do not provide for the existence of intersex people is not a good reason, "wrote the judge.

The State Department said in a written statement that it was reviewing the decision and coordinating the procedure with the Ministry of Justice on the next steps.

The ruling only applies to Zzyym, but Lambda Legal's senior counsel, Paul Castillo, has called the challenge "revolutionary, the first of its kind" with regard to gender options. limited in federal identification.

Castillo said the defenders hope this will prompt the State Department to edit the passport application and allow people to choose a gender marker other than male or female.

"I'm not going to lie about my passport application, I should not do it, and the judge here twice is in agreement with me," Zzyym said in a statement issued by the defense organization LGBT civil rights.

Jackson did not specifically order the department to issue a passport to Zzyym in his decision. But state department lawyers have provided no reason for past denials, except Zzyym's refusal to choose a gender marker.

Castillo said Zzyym's lawyers "call on the department to issue a passport quickly".

"Dana has been waiting since 2014 to travel, but does not want to risk lying to get a passport," he said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, the US agency that sets standards for international travel documents, states that the gender must be written on the passport as male, female or "X for unspecified". Several countries issue passports with non-feminine or masculine gender designations, including "X" or "O".

A number of US states are also issuing driver's licenses or identity cards with "X" as their choice for gender markers, including California, Oregon and Washington.