Social Security "immediately" stopped making sex identification changes

[Jessica_Rose]

Exclusive: Social Security "immediately" stopped making sex identification changes on Friday

https://www.lawdork.com/p/social-security-stops-sex-identification-changes

Chris Geidner (1 Feb 2025)

The Social Security Administration has stopped allowing people to make changes to their sex identification with the federal agency, an "emergency" change that was issued on Friday and went into effect "immediately."

The move is explained as a direct result of one of President Donald Trump's anti-transgender orders since retaking the presidency.

It is also a dramatic, instant reversal of more than a decade of changes that made changing your gender marker with the SSA easier and easier.

Although the Social Security Administration (SSA) took down the page on how to change your sex identification days into the Trump administration, there were anecdotal reports of changes still being allowed in the time since.

On Friday, however, an "emergency message" was issued internally stating, in part, "Effective immediately, we can no longer process changes to the sex field on the NUMIDENT."

NUMIDENT, or Numerical Identification System, contains all of the information provided to obtain a Social Security number and includes a listing of a person's sex.

There is also a directive regarding the National 800# Call Center: "If an individual contacts the national 800# call center to inquire about changing the sex field on the NUMIDENT, advise the caller we are not able to accept or process a sex field change."

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Many states require an update to the gender in Social Security records before they will process a gender update for a drivers license. This will at least temporarily block gender updates to a drivers license in several states. If you still have the ability to make this change, do it now. Yesterday would be even better.

Love always -- Jessica Rose

[Lori Dee]

I thought SSA stopped using gender markers, but Medicare still used them.

I found this at the Advocates For Trans Equality website:

"The largest system used by private employers, the Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS), eliminated gender in 2011. However, some systems used by state government agencies will still match gender against SSA records."

So that explains it. The earlier change (2011) only applied to the SSN Verification System, not the SSA records themselves.