OPINION:
Donald Trump’s election prompted a competition among liberal jurists. Each seeks to one-up the other in devising more outlandish proclamations that signal resistance to the 47th president’s authority. The latest such edict forces executive acceptance of “X” as a valid identifier of someone’s sex.
If Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Julia E. Kobick were merely an expression of that Boston-based judge’s personal view, that would be one thing. Yet this unelected magistrate has compelled the State Department to resume printing special passports for transgender activists, contrary to the orders of the secretary of state.
The “X” passport was a novelty created during Joseph R. Biden’s term, and Judge Kobick didn’t appreciate the new administration’s overturning the work of the president who appointed her to a cushy lifetime gig.
“The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their equal protection claim because … the Executive Order and Passport Policy are rooted in irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans,” she ruled.
True irrationality enters when the “trust the science” crowd retreats from reality. When Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her 2022 confirmation hearing what it meant to be a woman, the now-justice replied, “I’m not a biologist.”
Such feigned ignorance is intentional. Leftists have been pushing for years to strip all meaning from the concept of womanhood. In its place, they substitute a vague feeling open to anyone. This enables cultural Marxists to erase all distinctions between the sexes.
Without realizing it, Judge Kobick acknowledged that the people she was catering to with her decision weren’t exactly paragons of mental stability. “People who possess passports bearing sex markers that conflict with their gender identity and expression are, as Dr. [Ayden] Scheim explained, significantly more likely to experience psychological distress, suicidality, harassment, discrimination, and violence,” she wrote.
Follow the train of logic, and the next stop would require the government to accept the 31 flavors of gender outlined by the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Presumably, it would cause equal psychological distress for a “femme queen,” “gender gifted” or “two-spirit” to be lumped under a single letter such as “X.”
That was why this administration took action to stop the insanity. As the court reluctantly acknowledged, the executive has “broad rule-making authority” regarding passports. This authority flows from the president’s responsibility over foreign affairs. It’s hard to take a country seriously when such frivolous markers appear on government documents.
It’s not like the administration is asserting a radical position. Stating one’s sex based on the “immutable biological classification as either male or female” has served humanity well for several thousand years. The purpose of the passport is to identify travelers, not boost self-esteem. Foggy Bottom argues that “gender identity” is so amorphous that it provides no “meaningful basis for identification.”
Liberal zealots rely on vagueness to advance their interests. The ones wearing black robes no longer believe their job is to settle individual cases; instead, they claim unilateral authority to set policy for the nation.
That was not what the Founders intended. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already challenged the ruling before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, Mr. Biden appointed all but one of the active judges on that bench, and President Obama appointed the other.
Common sense is unlikely to prevail unless Congress or the Supreme Court intervenes to restrain the judicial resistance competition.
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