Social Security Administration – Original Photo: Bruce Bortin, Flickr CC
The U.S. Social Security Administration has stopped allowing people to make changes to the gender marker, also known as “sex identification,” on their Social Security records.
As first reported by Metro Weekly alum Chris Geidner, writing for his Law Dork Substack, the Social Security Administration imposed the “emergency” change last Friday. It went into effect “immediately.”
The “emergency message,” issued internally, stated, “Effective immediately, we can no longer process changes to the sex field on the NUMIDENT,” a reference to the Numerical Identification System, which contains the information provided to obtain a Social Security number, including a person’s sex.
In the first days of the second Trump administration, the Social Security Administration took down a webpage outlining how to change one’s sex identification. However, there had been anecdotal reports of changes still being allowed.
The internal directive from the Social Security Administration now closes the door on that possibility.
The policy change marks a reversal of a trend where the Social Security Administration was making it easier for transgender individuals to change the “sex” on their record to reflect their gender identity.
In 2013, the Obama administration eliminated a requirement that a person needed to undergo gender confirmation surgery to change the sex field on their records, instead accepting a note from a physician certifying that a person had undergone a gender transition.
In 2022, the Biden administration allowed individuals to self-select their gender marker without providing medical documentation — which, as Geidner notes, was the original policy of the Social Security Administration from its inception until 1980, when the agency began requiring documentation showing that “sex-change surgery has been started.”
That surgical requirement was bolstered subsequently in 2002 and 2003 to require proof from a surgeon that a person seeking to change the sex on their record had completed gender confirmation surgery.
The policy change aligns with President Trump’s executive order stating that the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, based on a person’s assigned sex at birth.
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, is a Trump appointee.
The “emergency message” contained instructions for employees directing them not to accept changes to the gender marker on a person’s Social Security record.
“An individual’s sex data is male (M) or female (F). In accordance with the recent presidential actions under Executive Order ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to The Federal Government,’ sex field data changes on the NUMIDENT must not be accepted or processed.”
The message directed field offices to inform those seeking to change the sex listed on their records that the sex field cannot be changed. If an individual contacts the administration’s call center to ask about changing the sex field, employees are instructed to inform the person that “we are not able to accept or process a sex field change.”
U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is the latest high-profile Democrat to come out in opposition to transgender athletes competing on female-designated sports teams.
In an interview with the right-wing news outlet The Dispatch, Gallego echoed President Donald Trump and a host of Republican lawmakers who have been vocal in their opposition to transgender participation in female-designated sports.
"As a parent of a daughter, I think it's legitimate that parents are worried about the safety of their daughters, and I think it's legitimate for us to be worried also about fair competition," he said.
Owen McIntire, a 19-year-old from Parkville, Missouri, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges after allegedly firebombing Teslas at a Kansas City dealership. The crime could carry up to 30 years in prison if the UMass Boston student is convicted.
McIntire's case was elevated to the Justice Department’s national security division, which typically handles terrorism and espionage cases. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has called the incident “domestic terrorism.”
"Let me be extremely clear to anyone who still wants to firebomb a Tesla property: you will not evade us," Bondi said following McIntire’s arrest in April. "You will be arrested. You will be prosecuted. You will spend decades behind bars. It is not worth it."
When J. Ahmir "Ricky" Vines was in elementary school, growing up with a single mom, he would get in trouble with his teachers for scribbling lyrics during class. Eventually, realizing that his lyrical prowess could earn him some extra money, he began selling lyrics to local rappers in his town and stashing the extra cash in a shoebox.
"There's a big underground music culture in North Carolina," says the Winston-Salem native. "I would sell these lyrics to these older kids and these young rapper guys around the city."
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