The Race Is On

How fast can you run down to your local Society Security office and passport office?

Who knows what will change after January 20^th?

Transgender people are scrambling to update their documentation
They aren’t sure what will happen after January 20.
Think Progress
By Zack Ford
November 11, 2016

The Trump presidency presents a major threat to the basic legal rights of LGBT people, who have expressed their terror in multiple news stories this week. In the wake of the election, transgender people in particular are acting with urgency.

One of the primary challenges transgender people face is making sure that their legal documentation matches their names and gender identities. This can include their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, social security cards, and passports, as examples. While the accessibility of adjusting some of those documents varies from state to state (particularly birth certificates, which in some states can never be changed), many of the federal documents can be updated quite easily.

For example, in 2010, the State Department — under the leadership of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — updated its policy to make it very simple for transgender people to obtain a passport identifying their correct name and gender identity. It’s also relatively easy to make sure the Social Security Administration’s records reflect the correct name and gender marker.

The article has a Q&A with Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project

THINKPROGRESS: Almost all of the protections transgender people currently have at the federal level have come from executive action and departmental guidance. What does a Trump/Pence White House look like for transgender people?

CHASE STRANGIO: It is hard to anticipate precisely what a Trump/Pence White House looks like for transgender people but certainly there are reasons to be concerned about what lies ahead for our community. Particularly for trans immigrants, Muslim people who are trans, and trans people of color, the prospect of a Trump presidency is particularly terrifying.

With many important protections coming through executive agency action, trans people will have to fight to maintain those and if we lose those protections, our already vulnerable community will be even more vulnerable to government-sanctioned and private discrimination.

That is why I suggest changing all of your documents as soon as possible because it is a great big unknown what will happen once the Republicans get their hand on all of the Executive Orders that President Obama issued. Will they go back to requiring surgery to change those documents? Will they do away with changing Society Security, Medicare, and passports all together or with they leave the orders intact? It is anyone’s guess.