News Item

SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY CHANGES HURT TRANSSEXUALS AND INTERSEXED

November 18, 2002

What does one do if the boss walks in and says, "Hey, I thought you were a woman when I hired you. Why did you
lie to me?"

Farfetched? Hardly, and the Social Security Administration just made it more likely to occur.

In a mid-October 2002 policy change that took place without announcement or explanation, the Social Security
Administration instituted a tougher requirement for changing one's gender marker in the SSA records. The new
policy (RM 00203.210 paragraph C) requires a person -- the Number Holder (NH) in SSA parlance "to provide
Clinic or medical records or other combination of documents showing the sex change surgery has been completed.
All documents must clearly identify the NH  Previous policy required documents that show sex change surgery
has either been completed or started.

The new policy might seem reasonable at first blush; after all, it is the same requirement that must be met to
change gender on one's U.S. passport, usually satisfied by a notarized letter from the surgeon saying that he
had performed female-to-male or male-to-female sex reassignment surgery on the individual.

However, transgender activists and many transsexuals and intersexed people realize that the Social Security
situations and the passport situations are not the same. Many people can do without a passport while in
transition from one sex to another or in the process of correcting birth defects, but everyone must provide
one's Social Security number to an employer.

Problems arise when the SSA runs a periodic audit of company records and the gender markers don't match. SSA
advises the company that there is an error in the company's records and directs the company to correct its
records. This sends the boss or someone from payroll to the person's worksite asking, "Why doesn't your
gender match what Social Security says it is?"  And another transsexual is ousted and legally subject to
termination in most locations.

The State Department will issue a one-year temporary passport in the new gender for pre-op transsexuals or
intersexed people whose surgeons certify that a surgery date has been scheduled. The new SSA policy does not
address this issue of people who are in transition or who cannot undergo sex reassignment surgery for health or
financial reasons but who live and work in their chosen gender. Because the Benjamin Standards of Care for
transsexuals require a minimum one-year "Real Life Experience" of living and working in the new gender full
time before obtaining authorization for sex reassignment surgery, the new SSA policy will adversely impact almost
every transsexual in transition.

"This step backwards in the Social Security Administration's understanding and handling of transsexual and
intersexed needs will lead to further discrimination against a whole class of people who already have enough
obstacles in their way" said Robyn Walters, board member of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition.
"Government should be about making people's lives better, not about making life more difficult".

Walters noted that such actions by a federal agency that impacts the life of every citizen reinforce the need for
an Employment Nondiscrimination Act that includes protection for the transgender community.  "A
transgender-inclusive ENDA would remove the worry of being fired for not appearing as Social Security records
indicate," said Walters, "but it would not avoid the embarrassment or exposure to bigotry that would come by
being outed as a transsexual."