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Self-Attestation is the Right Step for the Social Security Administration

November 14, 2022 • By

Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Last Updated: December 28, 2022

Social Security Administration LogoThe 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:

  1. Find your Local SSA Field Office
  2. Apply for a replacement SSN card
  3. 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.

  1. Your SSN record will be updated.
    1. You may choose to have your SSN card be reissued if it was lost.
    2. 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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About the Author

Olivia Hunt, Policy Director, National Center for Transgender Equality

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Comments

  1. Loss o.

    I don’t even think that a few comments are even from Americans. They sound like scammers. This doesn’t seem real.

  2. Amanda W.

    Very nice article and I really liked it a lot. Furthermore,MySkinnStudiois the best website that makes you to enable consultation about your skincare problems.

  3. Team W.

    The pushing of the LGBTQ agenda by the Biden administration that is affecting all areas of the government (including the SSA) is truly disturbing. No more money to you until you take the pandering to these groups out of the equation. The agents should be helping the real situations.

  4. J.Q. P.

    Ref: Self-Attestation is the Right Step for the Social Security Administration. Before Soc Sec starts focusing giving any of my paid-in money to transgender, they had better remove the WEP and pay me full benefits for my 21+years. As the Guns-n-Roses” song goes, “you can have whatever you want, you had just better not take it from me.” Thousands stand with me on this and its time to take back what is rightfully ours. Because of BS like this, our country is leading towards a full revolution and congress is too blind to see that Jan 6th was just a infinitesimal show of how upset the people of the nation actually are. Fix the real problems first!

    • Cedar U.

      People like us being hate crimed daily is a real problem 💚

  5. Hema

    Nicely Said-“Self-Attestation is the Right Step for the Social Security Administration”. Also applying for Mero Share Help you financially to some extent in Nepal and Learning English in Nepal will be helpful if you are planning to move USA

  6. Recruitment A.

    Blog is very nice. 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.

  7. Team U.

    one country that is really not biased and really giving equal opportunity for LGBTQ+ community is US

  8. Lori D.

    While Trans-gender is a small part of America, Social Security should be focused on the bigger problems it faces.

    • Tracey

      Amen! I am appalled that this is what the BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FED OFFICES are giving their time to! Since it is yhe PEOPLE OF AMERICA who pay their salaries, I guarantee you, if a honest poll was done in ALL OF AMERICA, 99% would agree this is wasteful, gov’t spending of time, and resources! True MISFITS!!

      • Cedar

        I hope you don’t have LGBTQ+ family, for their sakes.

  9. Donald S.

    not hate, just a simple fact. the group youi are catering to represents maybe 3 Percent of the population. there are two gender, male and female. Furthermore, gender has nothing to do with the social security one gets. Get out of the political arena and take care of our money.

    • Todd J.

      Unfortunately, this Self-Attestation process developed by the SSA is just another step to appease the politically active minorities and not address the needs of the majority. How has the political left been able to direct this government in a direction contrary to the founding document of this country “THE BIBLE”.

  10. L. J.

    While Trans-gender is a small part of America, Social Security should be focused on the bigger problems it faces.

Comments are closed.