President will now force airlines to guess passengers’ genders if they have X gender markers

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

While U.S. passports with an “X” gender marker remain valid, a new policy from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) now requires airlines to provide either an “M” or an “F” for all passengers, essentially leaving them trying to guess a traveler’s gender assigned at birth.

“If the travel document presented by a traveler for an international flight to or from the United States has a sex indicator other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ or does not otherwise indicate the sex of the traveler, the carrier or the traveler should select either ‘M’ or ‘F,’” the CBP bulletin reads. “Submitting ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the sex field, in place of the value reflected on the travel document, will not subject the carrier to penalty.”

The CBP requires airlines to enter personal information for all passengers into the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) prior to their arrival at customs. That system will no longer accept nonbinary markers. While the bulletin makes it clear that the airline won’t be held at fault for providing information that differs from a passenger’s travel documents, it is unclear how a traveler might be treated if their documents do not fully match what is shown in the CBP’s system.

The CBP first brought the policy into effect…

Read full story, and more, from Source: President will now force airlines to guess passengers’ genders if they have X gender markers