U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Recognizing Male and Female Sexes in USCIS Benefit Requests Review and Document Issuance

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced today that it is updating the USCIS Policy Manual to clarify that it only recognizes two biological sexes, male and female. 

Consistent with President Trump’s January 20, 2025, “executive order, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, USCIS is returning to its historical policy of recognizing two biological sexes.”

The announcement further states:

“Under this guidance, USCIS considers a person’s sex as that which is generally evidenced on the birth certificate issued at or nearest to the time of birth. If the birth certificate issued at or nearest to the time of birth indicates a sex other than male or female, USCIS will base the determination of sex on secondary evidence. See Volume 1, General Policies and Procedures, Part E, Adjudications, Chapter 6, Evidence, Section B, Primary and Secondary Evidence [1 USCIS-PM E.6(B)].  

USCIS will not deny benefits solely because the benefit requestor did not properly indicate his or her sex. However, USCIS does not issue documents with a blank sex field, and does not issue documents with a sex different than the sex as generally evidenced on a birth certificate issued at the time of birth (or issued nearest to the time of birth). Therefore, if a benefit requestor does not indicate his or her sex or indicates a sex different from the sex on his or her birth certificate issued at the time of birth (or issued nearest to the time of birth), there may be delays in adjudication.”

For more information, see the Policy Alert [PDF].

KJ