Vital Records Rights:

Vital records are official documents maintained by government authorities like birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, and Social Security cards. This page provides the tools you need so these documents can reflect and respect your unique identity, including through name and gender marker changes.

While the federal government has put policies in place to prevent updating the gender marker on your federal documents, like Social Security records and passports, advocates are challenging these policies. Additionally, Illinois protects the right to self-select your gender marker on Illinois ID documents, including state IDs, driver’s licenses, Real IDs, and birth certificates. You can change your name on all state and federal documents with a court order.

The resources on this page provide information and resources for people seeking to change their name or gender marker on identification documents. There are also resources available to answer your questions about your ID documents and to links to organizations that provide assistance with updating identification documents.

Trump v. Orr court case on passport gender markers:

The Trump Administration issued an Executive Order in January 2025 requiring that passports list an individual’s sex assigned at birth. That policy was challenged in court by the ACLU, and in June 2025, a District Court ordered that the government must allow people to self-select the sex marker on their passport. In November 2025, the Supreme Court overruled this District Court order, which means the government is no longer required to allow people to self-select the sex marker on their passport. The ACLU is continuing to fight against this Trump Administration policy in court. If you have questions about how this information applies to you, or if you have questions about renewing or changing your passport, see this Q&A from the ACLU, and call the IL Pride Connect legal information hotline at 855-805-9200.

Traveling with an ‘X’ gender marker on your passport:

A new U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy on ‘X’ gender markers on travel documents recently went into effect. The policy does not ban or prevent traveling with an ‘X’ marker on your passport or other travel documents. Passports with an ‘X’ marker remain valid until their expiration date.

The policy prohibits airlines from entering an ‘X’ gender marker in a data entry system for international flights into and out of the United States. This policy means airlines will have to enter either ‘M’ or ‘F’ in the sex field in their data entry system. The data entry system is called the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS). We do not yet have information on how this data entry system change may affect travelers. If you have questions about this policy or experience issues traveling due to the gender marker on your ID documents, you can call the IL Pride Connect Hotline at 855-805-9200 to speak with a legal advocate.

Check out this guide from Lambda Legal for help safety planning for traveling.