Self-Attestation is the Right Step for the Social Security Administration
Reading Time: 2 MinutesLast Updated: December 28, 2022
The two most important parts of transition for many transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse people are changing their name and correcting their gender marker on official records. This process often required jumping through many legal, medical and bureaucratic hoops.
Medical certification created unnecessary barriers for trans, nonbinary or gender diverse persons. These included:
- Incurring monetary costs for a doctor to provide a medical certification.
- Incurring wait time to process, review, and accept the medical certification document (i.e., ensuring the correct wording, spelling, and color of ink signature).
Previously, this administrative process caused trans persons to submit multiple versions of a doctor’s letter before they received one that was accepted.
Social Security’s new policy on Self-Attestation eliminates what can often be the most frustrating of those hoops. Under this new policy, Social Security no longer requires legal or a medical documentation to certify a person’s gender before it can be changed on their record. When the information that someone reports on a document does not need verification by a secondary source, that is called self-attestation. Self-attestation is the standard we use for information on most forms that we fill out. For instance, nobody is called upon to prove their height or weight on their driver’s license application.
Here are the steps to follow to update their sex marker in SSN records:
- Find your Local SSA Field Office
- Apply for a replacement SSN card
- Show a current document to prove your identity (i.e., U.S. passport, U.S. driver’s license, or State-issued non-driver identification card)
The agency will accept the applicant’s self-identified sex designation of either male or female, even if it is different from the sex designation shown on identity documents.
- Your SSN record will be updated.
- You may choose to have your SSN card be reissued if it was lost.
- Or, you can keep your current card. SSN cards do not include sex markers.
Having the correct name and gender marker on IDs and records is about more than convenience. It’s also a matter of dignity and safety. The National Center for Transgender Equality learned, through a U.S. Transgender Survey conducted nationwide in 2015, that having incorrect documentation was a significant cause for much of the discrimination and violence trans individuals face daily.
Social Security has modernized their processes to decrease administrative burdens and ensure gender equity in the Social Security Number card application process. Now, millions of transgender, nonbinary, or gender diverse people can update their most common ID documents and records without providing medical documentation. Help us spread the word. Please share this information with friends and family who need it.
We look forward to providing feedback as the agency explores future policy and systems updates to support an “X” sex designation for the SSN card application process.
Our posting of this blog does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation of any non-Social Security organization, author, or webpages.
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Tags: self-attestation, transgender
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Recruitment A.
Blog is very nice. The two most important parts of transition for many transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse people are changing their name and correcting their gender marker on official records.
Celso
Few comments are opened to ask questions.
What is the effect date SSA considered when applying for Retirement Benefit, the date you start filing the application online or the date you chose to start receiving your first payment?
I hope anyone can help…
Tanks.
Lois
I imagine it would be when you first receive it and they may send a letter telling when it’s effective.
J.das
Appreciated-
Mero S.
Does parent coming with us will get any social security i am curios to know.
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MaryAnne
Thank you for this step forward. Your change in policy
will help end some discrimination, hatred and harm.
Torsten
I think this is a step in the right direction. There are so many ways we categorize ourselves – there is no need to to add a binary gender to it.
Torsten@
https://www.mightytravels.com
Tom
Agreed, Torsten. Too much hot air spewed about gender. Most of the time it’s not important or relevant.
Commonsense
This is nonsense. A castrated bull is not and never can be a heifer. These people are what they were born as and their DNA controls their identity. Anyone who thinks they can beat or change their DNA coding is delusional and needs counseling not a knife, drugs, or injections. SSA records are legal documents based upon fact, not feelings. This social engineering nonsense is dangerous and harmful to not only society but the people who believe in it. I, as an XY male, can no more become an XX female than I can grow wings and fly.
Rudy B.
Enough of this Trans Gender BS. Stop placating this queerness and make those so emotionally disturbed face up and adapt to their biological reality or die. We don’t need more government injection into fantasy agenda of the leftist elements of the once capable Democrat Parity. Today we have Communists and they need to be removed by force if needed.
Commonsense
Absolutely, speak it from the rooftops brother.
Carter L.
I am sorry that your comments are a cesspit right now. Thank you very much for this update to the SSID policy, it will make updating legal records much easier now.
Chief W.
Often sex change in the US and of US citizens abroad is a matter of ‘medical necessity’ as I’m told the body can heal better after combat wounds. I wonder if more people knew this if it would affect their feelings on the matter.
hardik c.
Perhaps some people do not want to be called humans
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