President Donald Trump on Monday issued an executive order defining a person’s sex as “male or female” and requiring federal agencies to use these designations on forms and IDs.
The order will also alter federal prison policies related to trans-identified inmates.
The move comes amid a national debate over gender ideology and issues such as allowing trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports and occupy women’s spaces. The issue became prominent in the 2024 presidential campaign as Trump continually slammed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Biden administration’s continued efforts to push progressive gender ideology in sports, the classroom, and other institutions.
The order will remove all references to radical gender ideology in government guidance, communications, policies, and forms. Federal agencies will no longer acknowledge the notion that men can become women and vice versa when enforcing sex discrimination laws.
It will cease the practice of forcing female inmates in federal prisons to live with biological males who identify as transgender. The order will halt the compelled use of “preferred pronouns” as well, which means individuals cannot be forced to adhere to progressive ideas regarding gender. This applies to government-run schools receiving federal funding.
From the executive order:
Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.
The order also requires every federal agency to “use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ in all applicable Federal policies and documents.”
Former President Joe Biden vigorously worked to advance the left’s gender agenda in several different areas of government. His administration rewrote Title IX guidance, which is intended to prevent discrimination in education based on sex. He sought to expand the language to include gender identity, which could have led to the federal government forcing schools to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports.
However, a federal judge in Kentucky recently struck down Biden’s efforts. The judge ruled that the Education Department was not allowed to expand Title IX’s definition, arguing that “Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.”
The Biden administration later withdrew its proposed rule changes. Jonathan Scruggs, Alliance Defending Freedom’s Senior Counsel and Vice President of Legal Strategy, lauded the move, saying it “reflects the views of the vast majority of Americans who believe that women’s sports should remain reserved for female athletes.”