A new report reveals that a staggering number of transgender people in the United States lack any form of ID that displays their correct gender marker.
As many as 476,000 transgender adults do not have a driver’s license or state ID that matches their sense of self, according to a study conducted by the UCLA’s Williams Institute. If the pro-LGBTQ+ think tank’s estimate of the overall population of trans Americans is correct, that amounts to around 34% of transgender people in the U.S.
Analyzing data from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), researchers found that states with the most barriers to updating documents also had the lowest numbers of transgender people with correct identification. In Michigan, a nation-leading 77.7% of trans adults lacked any form of ID that corresponds with their lived identity. Next on the list of states with few corrected IDs were Alabama (75.5%), South Carolina (73.8%), Tennessee (73.2%), and Iowa (70.1%).
Several of these states require that trans people obtain a court order or present proof of having received some form of gender-confirmation surgery before they can legally change their documents. According to the Movement Advancement Project, 8 states are in this most restrictive tier: Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Tennessee, meanwhile, remains the only state in the country that bars transgender people from correcting their birth certificates at all. That policy is being challenged in court by advocacy groups like Lambda Legal.
On the flip side, Delaware has the lowest number of transgender residents who do not have affirming IDs, at 31%. Other states where trans adults have widely been able to obtain correct identity documents are Hawaii, with just 33.0% of individuals lacking an accurate ID, along with Alaska (36.6%) and the District of Columbia (39.1%).
But even in states where trans people are able to access IDs that match their gender, the requirements can still be invasive and expensive. Court fees, legal fees, and outdated publication requirements can all add up into a substantial barrier to changing crucial documents. In many states, transgender people are required to publish notice of their name or gender change in a local newspaper, which publicly outs them.
The USTS reports that over a third (35%) of respondents who didn’t try to legally change their name cited bureaucratic hurdles as the main reason why.
The impact on trans people who don’t have matching identity documents are huge, ranging from employment discrimination to being refsed the right to vote. The USTS reports that one in 4 respondents who showed an ID inconsistent with their gender presentation were verbally harassed. Another 16% were denied services, 9% were asked to leave a location, and 2% were physically or sexually assaulted.
Incidents like these can have profound consequences for trans people’s health. An Oklahoma trans woman was denied a COVID-19 vaccine in April after her name on her ID and paperwork didn’t match, even though she told the provider that she was waiting on name change paperwork.
The Williams Institute analysis particularly found that having corrected documents made a significant difference in the way trans people were treated when going through airport security. Over a quarter of trans people who had not corrected their driver’s licenses or state IDs were questioned by TSA officers, while just 8.9% who had accurate IDs were stopped.
In recent years, several states have moved to change the policies that currently make changing name and gender on IDs so difficult. In April, New Jersey became one of 20 states to allow gender-neutral “X” markers on driver’s licenses. And earlier this month, the New York State Assembly passed the state’s Gender Recognition Act, which would
remove barriers like the publication requirement if signed into law. The bill awaits signoff from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The Biden administration has hinted that it may allow “X” markers on federal identification documents, but it has yet to formally roll out plans to do so.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for them.’s weekly newsletter here.
