Executive Order 14166

Executive Order 14166

"Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government"
Type	Executive order
Executive Order number	14166
Signed by	Donald Trump on January 20, 2025 (2025-01-20)

Executive Order 14166, titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, is an executive order issued by Donald Trump on January 20, 2025,^[1] the day of his inauguration as president of the United States.

The order seeks the protection of "sex-based rights" and the rejection of gender identity and "gender ideology" by the federal government, calling "gender ideology" an effort to "eradicate the biological reality of sex" in language and policy. It would require federal departments to recognize gender as a male-female binary only (determined by biological sex assigned at conception), replace all instances of "gender" with "sex" in materials, cease all funding for gender-affirming care, cease allowing gender self-identification on federal documents such as passports, cease the funding or promotion of "gender ideology", cease the application of Bostock v. Clayton County as to provide Title VII protection based on gender identity in federal activities, and prohibit transgender people from using single-sex federally funded facilities congruent with their gender.

The executive order was described by critics as part of a broader effort to erase and deny the existence of transgender and non-binary people^[2] and roll back their protections.^[3][4][5][6] It was widely condemned as "extremist" and "cruel" by feminist, LGBT, and civil rights organizations including the National Organization for Women.^[7]

Trump signed the order on his first day as president, as well as more than 25 other executive orders and sweeping pardons for January 6 defendants.^[8] A Trump administration official said "this is step one" and that more restrictions on transgender people will follow.^[9]

The Associated Press noted that Trump "made his opposition to transgender rights central to his closing argument before Election Day, using demeaning language and misrepresentations to paint an exceedingly narrow slice of the U.S. population as a threat to national identity."^[10] According to Miriam Juan-Torres González, an expert on authoritarian populism, the Trump campaign’s attacks on transgender people exemplify how authoritarian populists use perceived threats to justify restrictive policies. She explained that the Trump campaign fueled so-called moral panic by portraying trans athletes as a threat to societal norms and advocating for stricter government control over transgender rights.^[11]

The order stated that it would "defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male."^[12] It defined "female" and "male" as "a person belonging, at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and a "person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell" respectively. It defined "gender ideology" as replacing "the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true".^[13]

The executive order mandated that:^[12][14][1]

• Federal agencies should use "sex" instead of "gender", remove materials that "promote gender ideology", and halt "funding of gender ideology"^{[1]: § 3(a), 3(e)}
• Official government documents such as passports and visas stop allowing self-selection of gender^{[1]: § 3(d)}
• Transgender people be barred from government-funded single-sex facilities congruent with their gender identity^{[1]: § 4}
• The Bureau of Prisons halt any federal funding for gender-affirming care.^{[1]: § 4(c)}
• That federal funding no longer go to gender-affirming care^[15]
• The attorney general provide guidance "to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions" in federal agency activities.^{[1]: § 3(f)}
• Prior policies and federal government documents that are inconsistent with this order be rescinded, including policies that require the use of names and pronouns consistent with a person's gender identity in federal workplaces.

Hours after the order was signed, the Trump administration deleted mentions of LGBTQ+ resources across government websites.^[16]

The American Civil Liberties Union's Chase Strangio described the executive order as aimed at eradicating trans people from civic and public life. ^[17] The ACLU vowed to take the Trump administration to court "wherever we can" to defend LGBTQ rights.^[18]

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said "today's expected executive actions targeting the LGBTQ+ community serve no other purpose than to hurt our families and our communities" and that "we will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we've got."^[18] Advocates for Trans Equality stated that it would continue to protect national transgender rights.^[19] Asian Americans Advancing Justice also expressed its intention to "confront hate and discrimination in all its forms" regarding the order.^[20] Lambda Legal chief legal officer Jennifer Pizer stated that she expects her organization and others to sue the administration.^[21]

The assertions of the executive order were described as being at odds with determinations of expert groups including the American Medical Association, which holds that gender identity is a spectrum, not an "immutable male-female binary".^[2] Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress, pointed out that human embryos are phenotypically female for approximately six weeks after conception before the SRY gene initiates the process of sex determination, therefore believing that the order had effectively "declared everyone a woman" due to language defining sex assignments as being determined "at conception".^[22][23]

Maryland's Attorney General Anthony Brown released a statement denouncing the order, stating that it would threaten peoples' lives, and that he aimed to "protect all Marylanders – especially members of marginalized communities – and wants transgender residents of our State to know that they belong, they matter, and our Office will fight for their rights and safety."^[24]

According to Voice of America, the order received mixed reactions across Africa, with conservatives welcoming it and gay rights activists condemning it.^[25]

Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, issued a statement in support of the executive order stating in part "We are long overdue in this effort to reestablish the exclusivity of two genders...".^[26]

According to The New Republic, the executive order is "packed with the kinds of conspiratorial thinking about gender and sexuality that have become commonplace on the right."^[27]

• Transphobia
• Adult human female
• Transgender rights in the United States
• Transgender disenfranchisement in the United States
• Transphobia in the United States
• Identity documents in the United States
• History of transgender people in the United States
• LGBT rights in the United States
• Transgender rights
• List of transgender-related topics
• 2020s anti-LGBT movement in the United States
• Parental rights movement
• Transgender rights movement
• Transgender history

• Full text of the executive order via whitehouse.gov