Seven transgender American citizens sued President Donald Trump and the State Department in federal court on Friday, arguing that a new policy that prevents people from changing gender markers on passports violates their constitutional rights.

The new passport policy stems from an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which was among the orders Trump signed on his first day back in office.

The order asserts that the government must end “gender ideology,” which the president described as “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.”

After reading Trump’s order, Zaya Perysian, a transgender woman in California, rushed to apply for a new passport last month, hoping she would receive one that included an “F” for female before the State Department rescinded long-standing policies allowing transgender people to update gender markers on their documents.

When the passport arrived in the mail, it identified her as a man.

“We didn’t expect the federal government to turn on us so quickly and render us void, basically,” said Perysian, 22, who is a plaintiff. “I am not a man and I will not accept being seen as a man while traveling.”

Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts, where several of the plaintiffs live. It adds to a torrent of legal challenges the Trump administration is facing on a host of initiatives, including efforts to end birthright citizenship and to drastically downsize the federal workforce.

Harrison Fields , a White House spokesperson, said Friday evening that the administration was prepared to defend the passport policy in court.

“Radical Leftists can either choose to swim against the tide and reject the overwhelming will of the people, or they can get on board and work with President Trump to advance his wildly popular agenda ,” he said in an email.

The president’s orders have sought to limit government recognition of an individual’s gender to the sex listed on the original birth certificate, bar transgender soldiers from serving in the military and require the Bureau of Prisons to house female transgender prisoners in men’s prisons. Trump also has called for the halting of any medical treatment to prisoners “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

The plaintiffs in the passports case argue that Trump’s policy violates constitutional protections against sex discrimination and infringes on the rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

The State Department has not issued detailed guidance to the public on its new passport rules. But transgender rights groups said the department in recent weeks did away with an option to select gender-neutral markers on passport applications and began issuing new documents to transgender people with markers that reflect the sex listed on applicants’ original birth certificates.

Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department, did not respond to an email seeking details of the new policy. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told the news outlet NOTUS last month that the new policy would not be applied retroactively, but that any new passports would reflect a person’s “God-given sex, which was decided at birth.”

Sruti Swaminathan, who represents the plaintiffs, said the new policy exposes transgender people to the potential for harassment, suspicion by authorities about fraudulent documents and even violence when they travel abroad.

“It’s deterring people from even wanting to travel,” said Swaminathan, who is nonbinary.

The change has broad implications beyond overseas travel, said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality. In recent years, he said, passports have become vital documents transgender people use to apply for jobs, housing, loans and government benefits, particularly in states where it’s difficult or impossible to include their gender identity on other forms of identification.

The newly issued passports effectively out transgender people against their will at a time when animus against them is widespread, he said. “It puts a scarlet letter on someone just because of who they are,” Heng-Lehtinen said.