Executive Order 14168, titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government", is an executive order issued by Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States, on January 20, 2025, the day of the inauguration of his second presidency.
Part of a broader targeting and persecution of transgender people in the United States, the order prohibits the federal government from recognizing the gender identity of transgender people. It requires the federal government to replace usages of "gender" with "sex", defining sex as an immutable male–female binary determined "at conception", and orders ceasing all funding for gender-affirming care and the promotion of "gender ideology", requiring the binary sex marker on the birth certificate printed closest to birth on all U.S. passports, and prohibiting transgender people from using sex-segregated spaces congruent with their gender in federally funded facilities. It also calls upon the attorney general to re-evaluate the application of Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) as to not provide Title VII protection based on gender identity in federal activities.
Provisions of the order have faced legal challenges, with temporary restraining orders having been issued to suspend the withholding of federal funding to programs that fund gender-affirming care and promote "gender ideology", the forced transfers of transgender inmates to facilities congruent with their sex assigned at birth, issuing all new U.S. passports in the bearer's assigned sex at birth (without regard to if they have completed sex reassignment surgery, have an amended birth certificate, or a legal sex change in their home state), and the mass removal of documents published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services that mention topics related to "gender ideology".
Background
On June 29, 2023, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump signed the "Presidential Promise to American Women" authored by the Concerned Women for America (CWA) Legislative Action Committee. According to Penny Young Nance, president of CWA, this was a "pledge to American women stating unequivocally there are only two genders, only women can be mothers and bear children, and as president, he will protect our safe spaces, our locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters, health care, education, and, yes, ban biological men from competing in women's sports".
Trump signed the order on his first day as president, as well as more than 25 other executive orders. A Trump administration official said "this is step one" and that more restrictions on transgender people will follow. CWA considers Trump's Executive Order a fulfillment of his Presidential Promise.
Workplace protections for transgender persons Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex, among other things. Historically, there has been ambiguity regarding whether protection against discrimination on the basis of "sex" can be understood to also encompass gender identity. This question eventually "matriculated up to the Supreme Court" when, in the Bostock v. Clayton County case (2020), the Court held that protections outlined in the Civil Rights Act did indeed extend to gender identity.
A key concern regarding this executive order is that, by changing the definition and enforcement of the term "sex" in ways that "ignores decades of scientific evidence to the contrary", it may undermine the protections afforded by the Bostock case.
Summary The order attacks what it calls "gender ideology", described as replacing "the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true". The order stated that it would "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 additionally defines "female" and "male" as "a person belonging, at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and a "person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell" respectively.
The executive order mandated that: Federal agencies should use "sex" instead of "gender", remove materials that "promote gender ideology", and halt "funding of gender ideology" Official government documents such as passports and visas must display the bearer's binary assigned at sex at birth, using the documentation and early public records printed closest to birth. Existing documents will not be affected unless they are renewed. Transgender people not be imprisoned in facilities congruent with their gender identity The Bureau of Prisons halt any federal funding for gender-affirming care and that the Prison Rape Elimination Act be amended and Americans with Disabilities Act be re-interpreted to do so. Federal funding no longer go to gender-affirming care. The attorney general provides guidance "to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions" in federal agency activities. Prior policies and federal government documents that are inconsistent with this order be rescinded, including policies that require the use of names and pronouns consistent with a person's gender identity in federal workplaces. For instance, EO 14168 rescinded the Biden-era EO 13988, which had previously mandated protections against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Analysis The order defines a female as "a person belonging, at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell", while a male is a "person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell".
It is not possible to determine at conception which reproductive cells an embryo will eventually create as it takes eight to 10 weeks for genetic signals to stimulate the development of non-neutral gonads (i.e. testes or ovaries).
Intersex people were not included in the executive order. According to activist Alicia Roth Weigel, this order "attempts to negate our very existence".
Some (including Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress) have speculated that the order may be interpreted as defining everyone as female since male genes are not expressed until 6–8 weeks after conception. This was called false by Snopes, referring to recent research that shows that it is incorrect to say that all embryos start as female. Instead, the Snopes analysis points out that since the executive order does not define what "belonging[...] to" means in terms of determining a person's sex, the order could be interpreted as either all persons belong to no sex, or alternatively, all persons belong to both sexes. In early development, human embryos develop both early-stage female reproductive tracts (i.e., Müllerian ducts) and early-stage male reproductive tracts (i.e., Wolffian ducts). It is only later in development that the expression of male or female genes normally causes one or the other of these tracts to further develop into male or female reproductive tracts, and the other to be absorbed.
Writing for The New York Times, Masha Gessen argued that the restrictions of this order, along with those implemented as part of Executive Order 14187 and Executive Order 14183 constituted an effort by the Trump administration to "denationalize" transgender people, much in the way that Jews were in 1930s Germany.
Implementation Hours after the order was signed, the Trump administration deleted mentions of LGBTQ+ resources across federal government websites.
In April 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated, "As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios" in response to a journalist who queried her for unrelated information. She later stated, "Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story."
Department of State
On January 22, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the Department of State to suspend all passport applications seeking a sex marker change or a nonbinary "X" sex marker. By January 23, 2025, a state department webpage describing how to amend the gender marker on passports was taken offline. According to a White House spokesperson, passports that have not expired will remain valid, regardless of how gender is depicted, but new applications will have to comply with the order and designate sex according to that assigned at birth. Some trans people also allege that upon applying to renew their passports, their documents were seized indefinitely and they were not issued a passport in any form.
International travel advisories by the State Department replaced their language on "LGBTQ+ Travelers" with language around "LGB Travelers" and removed reference to issues unique to transgender travelers to other countries.
On February 25, Rubio announced that transgender visa applicants who list a sex other than their assigned sex at birth on their visa application would be permanently banned from entry to the United States, and that applicants who do list their assigned sex on their application but whose home documents list a different sex would have their file marked with the letters 'SWS25' for tracking purposes. The announcement is framed as part of a ban targeting transgender female athletes alongside Executive Order 14201, however according to legal experts, the actual text of the order would apply to all transgender travelers.
Passport Policy Implementation According to Executive Order 14168, the State Department is required to look through the prior passport records of every passport applicant to determine if they may have had a passport under a different gender, or a gender that differs from their birth certificate. If this is the case, an information request letter is sent to request early early childhood records listing their sex at birth. The applicant must then send originals of their early childhood records, which must be unamended and unaltered. Amendments are only acceptable in the case of clerical error, and the documentation used to amend the birth certificate will be required to verify that it is for a true clerical error and not for gender identity.