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Mary Fox wasn’t expecting a fight when she drove to the Los Angeles Passport Agency on Wilshire Boulevard last month to get a new passport. As a trans woman, she worried about President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that it would be “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” but in the blue state of California—where the Gender Recognition Act, in effect since 2019, created a nonbinary gender category on state birth certificates and allowed residents to change their gender markers—she assumed it would be some time before the order was enforced.
“I applied for a new expedited passport for upcoming travel using a California REAL ID driver’s license, because my previous passport had been lost well over a decade ago,” Fox tells me. After submitting the necessary identification documents—including her state ID, birth certificate, and the name-change documentation she’d received in her previous state of residence—and paying via check, she was instructed to return to the agency a few days later. “They gave me a pickup slip for Tuesday, January 28, at 2 p.m., and I got there early. I was over-prepared—but I was worried about the wrong things, it would seem.”
As she waited at the passport agency that Tuesday, agents segmented off the part of the line that she was on—something that struck Fox as odd. Still, she says, her interaction at the agency “started off like a normal process.” That is, until the agent to whom Fox handed her pickup slip consulted a colleague, and then gave Fox a different number. “After they gave me that number, I sat there for a while and I did start recording, because I had a feeling that things were off,” she says.
Her instincts were soon proven correct. Initially, the LA Passport Agency offered to give Fox a passport with a male gender marker on it. Then they reneged that offer, and told her that they wouldn’t be able to give her a passport at all.
When Fox was eventually called up to speak to another agent, “They told me, ‘You initiated a process to do a gender marker change,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t want to initiate any process. All I’m looking to get is a passport, I don’t care what’s on it; the most important thing is that I get my passport so that I can travel.’” Fox was once again told to have a seat, and after conferring with superiors, LA Passport Agency officials told her that they wouldn’t be able to give her a passport with any gender marker whatsoever.
“Lots of people get name changes, but the order I gave them had nothing to do with gender. I did sign California’s form clarifying what you want to appear on your driver’s license, but I didn’t bring that with me. I just brought my California ID, which has a female gender marker on it, with me,” says Fox.
Things with the passport officials went downhill from there. “I started asking for clarity and asking if I would be allowed to travel out of the country, and they said they didn’t have answers for me,” Fox says. “I had been chatting with one of the LA Passport Agency security guards the day before—as a general vibe, I try to socialize in these kinds of situations and get a good feel for what’s going on—and he told me he would contact his sergeant, who would talk to the supervisor and see if they would speak with me.”
In time, the supervisor confirmed that Fox would not be given her new passport—nor the identification documentation she’d submitted, including her birth certificate. When Fox asked when those things would be returned, and how she would be able to travel or leave the country if necessary, the answer she received was: “We don’t have any answers, we’ll have to get back to you.” Fox then asked what would happen if she decided to stay and wait for an answer that day—only to be told that the LA Passport Agency would call the police to arrest her for trespassing.
The US State Department declined to comment on the record for this story, but Congressman Ted Lieu, who represents the district of Los Angeles in which the passport agency is located, offered the following statement to Vogue:
“A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members. That’s why reports of trans people facing obstacles in obtaining passports due to the Trump Administration’s recent executive order are deeply alarming. This policy, which mandates federally issued documents reflect a person’s birth sex, is not only unnecessary—it’s deliberately harmful. It creates needless bureaucratic hurdles and fosters uncertainty for trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals who are simply trying to live their lives.“
He continued: “While my office’s casework team has not yet heard directly from anyone impacted by this order, we stand ready to assist any constituent facing federal documentation issues. Everyone deserves equal access to government services, free from discrimination and undue hardship. I’m grateful to be from a state like California, where civil rights protections are among the strongest in the country. At a time when fundamental freedoms are under attack, that commitment to equality matters more than ever.”
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As Fox left the passport agency, she began recording a TikTok laying out her experience that would quickly amass over one million views and thousands of comments. “I made a random video on a small account and it’s gotten a lot of attention, which I didn’t really ask for, but to be honest, my biggest concern was that [the executive order] would impact not only me, but a lot of other people who need clarity as to what’s going on with their government-issued ID,” says Fox.
Indeed, the mess created by the executive order feels to Fox like part of its point. “I think one of the reasons people are being treated so differently is to drive division and confusion,” she says. “Some people get rights, some people are left hanging, some people get fast answers, and some are simply told no. It seems like they don’t want there to be a consistent policy, and it leaves me wondering whether the system has any integrity whatsoever anymore.”
While the confiscation of her identifying documents is certainly the starkest example of institutionalized transphobia that Fox has confronted lately, it’s by no means the only one. “Even in Los Angeles, I’ve heard a lot of rhetoric and sentiments change about trans rights after Trump’s reelection,” she says. “It definitely has me feeling concerned for not only myself, but a lot of other people. I worry that that these subtle things that happen really start to have a negative impact.”
On Monday, February 3, after a flurry of media attention and outreach from the LGBTQ+ community that Fox said made her feel “more love and support and understanding than I ever could have anticipated seeing in my inbox,” she was indeed able to collect her ID documents from the LA Passport Office, albeit with one small yet life-altering update: Fox’s gender marker was marked as male.
