A federal court has ruled the U.S. State Department cannot deny a passport to a Navy veteran who is intersex and identifies as neither male nor female.

Navy veteran Dana Zzyym, a Colorado resident born in 1958 with ambiguous sex characteristics, sued the federal government for refusing to issue a passport because it requires an applicant to denote either male or female on applications.

U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson in Denver ruled the State Department exceeded its authority under the Passport Act of 1926 and barred the department from relying on its binary-only gender marker policy to withhold a passport.

"The authority to issue passports and prescribe rules for the issuance of passports under [the Passport Act] does not include the authority to deny an applicant on grounds pertinent to basic identity," the judge said in the ruling on Wednesday.

Zzyym, who serves as associate director for Intersex Campaign for Equality and sued after being denied a passport to attend a work event in Mexico City in October 2014, cheered the decision.

"It's been nearly four years since the State Department first denied me a critical identity document that I need to do my job," Zzyym said in a statement. Read more via NBC