On January 20, 2025 -- his first day in office -- President Trump signed Executive Order 14168, "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government." The order directed all federal agencies to recognize only two sexes -- male and female -- as an "immutable biological classification" determined at conception, and to enforce this definition across all federal programs, policies, and documents.
The order's key provisions included: defining "sex" as exclusively biological and binary for all federal purposes; directing the Department of Education to revise Title IX guidance to eliminate protections for gender identity, effectively barring transgender students from participating in sports and using facilities consistent with their gender identity; requiring the State Department to issue passports reflecting only biological sex; directing federal prisons to house inmates based on biological sex; requiring all federal agencies to remove references to "gender identity" from official documents and websites; and mandating that federally funded programs, including healthcare, conform to the binary sex definition.
OPM issued initial implementation guidance on January 29, 2025, and agencies began immediately removing web pages and resources related to gender identity. NPR reported that federal web pages remained down as agencies scrambled to comply, affecting access to health information and services for transgender individuals. The Defense Department issued updated guidance on July 10, 2025, implementing the order across military and civilian personnel systems.
The order represented the administrative foundation for a comprehensive federal campaign against transgender rights, using the language of biological science and women's protection to justify the erasure of gender identity from federal recognition. Its effects cascaded through every agency and every federally funded institution, from public schools to hospitals to prisons, establishing the legal framework for dozens of subsequent anti-transgender policies throughout 2025-2026. Multiple legal challenges were filed, with courts issuing mixed rulings on various provisions.