I never thought about this possibility. Thanks for sharing. I hope it gains momentum and has a chance at passing.

I had no idea that this was a hurdle that they’d have to jump over

It seems stupid to me that this wasn’t the case already

This really needs to pass

As someone struggling with this issue, thank goodness someone is working on this!

I had a previous landlord illegally sell a settled debt to collections under my deadname, which wasn’t even my legal name at the time I had ended the lease at the apartment. They were aware of my legal name, as they had been accepting my checks with my new name for more than a year.

Because of this one item on my credit history, I have been unable to open bank accounts, apply for credit cards, or get loans because no one can verify my identity through the bureaus. I have sent several rounds of letters from myself and my lawyers to the credit bureaus and the collection agency providing the evidence that the debt was settled and demanding that they removed the item from my report, but they have refused to do anything to correct it.

Meanwhile, I know people who have changed their names several times due to marriages and divorces, and they have never had any issues verifying their information for financial situations. I am lucky to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t using my situation as a way to exercise control over me, but I know other trans people who have been forced to stay on contact with abusers simply because their abuser has financial power over them. Whether it be loaning them money when normal loan avenues fail them, listing them as an authorized user on a credit card and then threatening to remove them so they can’t buy anything, or providing them housing through special agreements because no one will rent to them without passing a credit check, there are so many ways that stuff like this makes life more dangerous for trans and nb people.

Stuff like this is intentional, unnecessary, and incredibly harmful for those of us who are just trying to live our lives.

Might be a stupid question with stupid assumptions, but does this count as an example of systemic inequality? I assume there was not any malicious intent here. Seems like a shortcoming of the system in place. This is a really interesting insight to trans people’s experience, I would have never considered such a scenario. This same scenario could apply to anyone with a name change as well, right?

Edit for clarity: I am heavily relying on the statement that this is a result of the first name being overly relied upon to match up data to be accurate. That would give a very clear explanation to the disparate experience people have with last name changes and first name changes. Makes me question how this has been framed as intentionally malicious treatment. As an engineer who is working through similar problems right now at work, we can’t even solely rely on SSN for matching people. It’s a surprisingly nontrivial problem to solve.