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.”

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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 on July 14, 2025, but it entered a 90-day informed compliance window. During that time, airlines could provide gender markers other than “M” or “F” without any issue. As of October 12, 2025, that informed compliance window has now expired, and entering a nonbinary gender marker will result in an error and need to be altered.

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The Biden administration began issuing passports with “X” gender markers back in 2021, and in some instances used a “U” for “undisclosed.” At the same time, the government made it so that changes for gender markers on passports no longer required medical paperwork, allowing trans and nonbinary people to correct their documents through self-identification.

At the start of his second term, the current president issued an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” CBP’s bulletin cites compliance with that order as the reason for the change in their policy.

That same order required that going forward a passport could only show the sex a person was assigned at birth. The policy has been challenged in court, and a stay was put on the order. In June, relief was provided for some people seeking to change the gender marker on their passports when applying for a new one. The administration is now asking the Supreme Court to allow the policy to be enforced.

This policy will also affect people from other countries coming into the U.S. with X gender markers. Canada, which has offered an X gender marker since 2017, recently joined other countries in issuing a travel advisory for trans passengers traveling to the United States, suggesting that the United States may try to turn them away.

In a statement, reported by Reuters, CBP said “foreign travelers’ gender as indicated on their passport and their personal beliefs about sexuality do not render them inadmissible to the United States.” However, this new policy vindicates Canada’s warning, which highlighted that passengers might be forced to provide a binary sex identifier.

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