HR1139-119

What This Bill Does

The Passport Sanity Act directs the Secretary of State to ensure applications for covered documents include only male and female options and prohibits issuing a passport, passport card, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad with an unspecified X gender designation. The bill is a narrow identity-document rule, but its practical effect is significant for nonbinary applicants and for State Department document systems. Supporters gain a statutory binary-sex rule for federal travel and citizenship documents; nonbinary and gender-diverse applicants lose a federal document option that better matches their identity.

Who Benefits and How

Binary-sex policy advocates benefit because the bill writes a male-or-female-only rule into covered State Department documents. Passport adjudicators benefit from a simple statutory marker list that removes discretionary X-marker processing. Members opposing X gender designations benefit from a direct legislative reversal of the current document option. Some foreign border-screening systems may benefit from passport data limited to two sex-marker values.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Nonbinary passport applicants lose the ability to receive a U.S. passport with an X marker. Transgender and gender-diverse travelers may face documentation mismatch, privacy, and safety burdens. State Department passport offices must change forms, instructions, issuance systems, and public guidance. Civil-rights litigators and advocacy organizations may face new legal disputes over identity-document access.

Key Provisions

• Requires covered document applications to offer only male and female sex-marker options.
• Bars issuance of passports, passport cards, and consular birth reports with an unspecified X designation.
• Directs the Secretary of State to enforce the binary-marker requirement.
• Removes the current federal travel-document option used by nonbinary applicants.