Trans Employees No Longer Under Threat from Social Security

[Natasha]

Trans Employees No Longer Under Threat from Social Security

http://www.bilerico.com/2011/09/trans_employees_no_longer_under_threat_from_social.php
9/16/11
Jillian T. Weiss

According to a press release yesterday from NCTE, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has confirmed that it has ended the practice of allowing gender to be matched in its Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS). This will result in the immediate cessation of SSA sending notifications that alert employers when the gender marker on an employee's W-2 does not match Social Security records.

[Dawn D.]

Very good news!


Dawn

[LivingInGrey]

Still seems like it could cause a problem.

If you apply for a job with the name Jane Doe with S.S.N. 123-45-6789 the S.S.A. will come back with a negative confirmation if the name registered with the S.S.A. is still John Doe at S.S.N. 123-45-6789

...

Or maybe they just go by your reported physical address (home address).

[Arch]

Still seems like it could cause a problem.

If you apply for a job with the name Jane Doe with S.S.N. 123-45-6789 the S.S.A. will come back with a negative confirmation if the name registered with the S.S.A. is still John Doe at S.S.N. 123-45-6789

Well, why shouldn't this be a problem? In the U.S., you don't need any kind of medical treatment or surgery if you want to change your name. Name changes are generally cheap and fast. But if you want the bureaucracies to be on board, you have to make the change legally. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Is there something I'm missing?

[LivingInGrey]

Well, I'm thinking more along the lines of having to deal with getting a job during the first stages of transitioning (I.E. RLE/pre-legal name change/pre-GRS).

If your still in the process of a transition trying to get a job would be impossible with out already placing your birth name on an application.

If the point of doing this is to help transgendered people not be discriminated against it's still a bit of a snafu because like I said, if you fill out the application as Jane Doe (pre-legal name change) with SSN 123-45-6789 it will still come back as unverifiable because the SSA will show SSN 123-45-6789 as John Doe.

[Arch]

Okay, I see what you're getting at, LivingInGrey, but I don't think it's nearly as much of a problem as the gender marker. You basically can't change the gender marker with the SSA unless you've had genital surgery (or for the guys, top surgery), but a name change is a piece of cake compared to that, even for low-income folks. And you can change your name at any time during transition or even before you start transition; I know countless people who changed their names well before they were "passing," and that includes me. Some of them are women, so I'm not just speaking for the guys. Seems to me that if you're already living full time as a woman and are going on job interviews while presenting as female, maybe you should have legally switched to your chosen name by that point.

I just don't think it needs to be an issue for the vast majority of us. I suppose it would be nice if you could register an alias with the SSA and not have it come up as a mismatch...was that what you were thinking? I expect that such a scheme would make identity theft that much easier and cause a lot of grief for both the SSA and individual citizens. The easy solution? Change your name when you start going full time--or even before--and just use your old name informally for as long as you need to.