1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to support policies that allow transgender and nonbinary Americans to have accurate gender markers on their federal identification documents, particularly passports. The Supreme Court's October 2024 stay in Orr v. Trump has allowed the State Department to resume misgendering trans Americans on their passports, reversing a federal policy that had been in place since 1992. This decision contradicts clear scientific evidence about the harm caused by forcing people to carry identification that does not reflect their correct gender identity. A 2022 study by Kyle K.H. Tan and colleagues examined 818 trans and nonbinary New Zealanders and found that individuals without correct gender markers on their documentation experienced significantly higher levels of psychological distress and greater odds of suicidal ideation compared to those with accurate documentation. This harm occurred even in New Zealand's relatively permissive system. Data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey by Scheim et al. confirmed these findings, showing that trans and nonbinary participants with all IDs reflecting their correct name and gender markers reported lower prevalence of suicidal ideation, serious mental distress, and planned suicidal behavior. Another U.S. study found that residents with changed names on both passports and driver's licenses reported lower levels of anxiety and depression. The World Health Organization recognizes that lack of access to IDs with correct gender markers contributes to multiple co-occurring health problems among trans and nonbinary people. Beyond the mental health impacts, these discriminatory passport policies create material barriers to employment and basic societal participation, effectively creating an underclass of undocumented and semi-documented trans Americans. Identification documents should represent a person's actual identity, not an arbitrary sex assigned at birth. I urge you to advocate for federal policies that allow all Americans to have accurate identification documents and to oppose any legislation that would restrict access to correct gender markers on passports and other federal IDs.