内容摘要：Women’s rights activists hold placards outside the Supreme Court to challenge gender recognition laws, in London, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Women’s rights activists hold placards outside the Supreme Court to challenge gender recognition laws, in London, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

With opposition lawmakers boycotting, the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament adopted a law earlier this month that made not registering as a foreign agent a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Georgian Dream said the measure matched the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the U.S.Parliament also adopted amendments to existing laws replacing the word “gender” with “the equality of women and men.”

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday partially blocked the Trump administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” marker used by many nonbinary people on passports as well as the changing of gender markers.U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, sided with the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which stays the action while the lawsuit plays out. It requires the State Department to allow six transgender and nonbinary people who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit to obtain passports with sex designations consistent with their gender identity.“The Executive Order and the Passport Policy on their face classify passport applicants on the basis of sex and thus must be reviewed under intermediate judicial scrutiny,” Kobick wrote. “That standard requires the government to demonstrate that its actions are substantially related to an important governmental interest. The government has failed to meet this standard.”

Kobick also said plaintiffs have shown they would succeed in demonstrating that the new passport policy and executive order “are based on irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans and therefore offend our Nation’s constitutional commitment to equal protection for all Americans.”“In addition, the plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on their claim that the Passport Policy is arbitrary and capricious, and that it was not adopted in compliance with the procedures required by the Paperwork Reduction Act and Administrative Procedure Act,” she added.

In an executive order signed in January, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives’ views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under former President Joe Biden.

The ACLU, which sued the Trump administration, said the new policy would effectively mean transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans could not get an accurate passport.Marion Calder, center, and Susan Smith, left, from For Women Scotland, celebrate outside after the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between the feminist group and the Scottish government, in London Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Marion Calder, center, and Susan Smith, left, from For Women Scotland, celebrate outside after the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between the feminist group and the Scottish government, in London Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)Justice Patrick Hodge said he and four other judges ruled unanimously that “the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman.”

In the law, “the words ‘sex,’ ‘woman’ and ‘man’ … mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man,” the judges wrote.The judges argued that a broader definition that includes transgender people would make the Equality Act “incoherent and unworkable.”