State Dept enforces EO memo

The State Department told posts and offices to designate restrooms and other “intimate spaces” by biological sex, extending President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order inside the agency. (dailysignal.com) The memo, dated Monday, is titled “Updates Regarding Biological Sex and Intimate Spaces, Including Restrooms,” according to a copy described by The Daily Signal. A State Department spokesperson said the department would apply the policy across federal facilities for “consistency, privacy, and safety in shared spaces.” (dailysignal.com) The order the memo cites is Executive Order 14168, signed on January 20, 2025. It says the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female, defines sex as immutable, and directs agencies to enforce sex-segregated spaces in federal workplaces and other covered settings. (federalregister.gov) The State Department had already applied the same order to passports. Its travel guidance says the department no longer issues passports with an “X” marker and now issues only “M” or “F” markers matching sex at birth; that page was last updated on November 18, 2025. (travel.state.gov) The memo lands after other federal agencies moved in the same direction. In May 2025, the General Services Administration rescinded a 2016 bulletin that had let people use restrooms in federal buildings that align with their gender identity. (govexec.com) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission added another layer on February 26, 2026, when it voted 2-1 that Title VII permits federal agencies to maintain single-sex bathrooms and similar intimate spaces and to exclude employees from opposite-sex facilities. The commission said the case arose from a federal employee’s challenge to a policy adopted under Executive Order 14168. (eeoc.gov) Civil-rights groups and transgender-rights advocates have challenged the administration’s approach in court. Lambda Legal said in February 2025 that it sued over Executive Order 14168 and argued the order “repudiates the very existence of transgender people” in federal policy. (lambdalegal.org) The legal fight runs alongside a narrower but unresolved question about bathrooms under federal job-discrimination law. In Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020, the Supreme Court held that firing someone for being gay or transgender violates Title VII, but the EEOC said in its February 2026 decision that federal courts have not authoritatively decided whether Title VII requires access to opposite-sex bathrooms based on gender identity. (law.cornell.edu, eeoc.gov) For now, the State Department memo shows how the White House order is moving from broad language into day-to-day rules for federal workplaces. The next test is likely to come in court, where judges will decide how far that guidance can go. (federalregister.gov, eeoc.gov)