Passport for transgender Women

Disclaimer: This is legal talk, not legal advice. Laws vary by state, and some of the information discussed on this page may not be applicable in your case. It is up to you to confirm any information herein by doing your own research.

Passports for US citizens

To get your name and sex changed on a valid passport, you will need a court-ordered name change and a notarized letter from your surgeon showing you have had sex reassignment surgery.

Note: without a NOTARIZED surgery letter, your passport will either say "Male" on the first page or will say "Female" with a notation in the back that says you are transsexual.

I have a friend whose letter from her surgeon in Thailand was not accepted and has this notation in her passport. She's not too happy, either. Another reason to consider North American surgeons.

The U.S. State Department has a list of forms. They are listed on the left column. I believe you will need:

DSP-19: Passport Amendment/Validation Application

Below is a letter from a reader explaining why you should get a court-ordered name change:

Recently, I was asked to travel to Asia on business. I knew that you could get a temporary passport in your new gender by getting letters from your doctors, so I gathered all the information and tried to get a new passport. My application was rejected, not because of my gender, but because of my name.

Apparently, the passport agency is adamant that they will only accept a new name if you have a court-ordered decree, or if you have been using the name at least five years. Otherwise, they will not do it. They will put Old Name (AKA New Name) on the passport if you like, but obviously that doesn't quite work for TS folks. It struck me as bizarre that they were quite willing to list me as a woman, but only with my old, male name.

Despite the trip being six weeks off, I was out of luck, as the country where I live requires a background check on name changes, and that takes 12 weeks. I had to request that someone else go in my place. I was very disappointed as I love to visit Asia.

When I started my transition, I was led to believe that a common-usage name change was good enough. I have to say based on personal experience that this is simply not the case. Despite California law requiring that such a change be honored, I have run into flak in case after case for not having a court order. Finally, the federal government obviously is not bound by California law, so it won't work there. I had been planning a court order, but it was a low priority and I wasn't really working on it. If I had only known, I could have done it months ago and been able to go on this overseas trip for my company.

I would strongly urge all people who transition to get a court-ordered name change as soon as possible. If you cannot afford the fees then you can petition the court to waive them. It's quite simple to do yourself. I used the book "How to Change your Name in California" from Nolo Press (which had the passport rules, but I had missed them).

Travel advisory

Following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., are more stringent requirements for documentation used when traveling by air, train, or bus in the U.S. and abroad. For this reason, I strongly urge all transgender travelers to get all documentation dealt with quickly and completely, especially Passport and Birth Certificate changes following SRS.

Those planning vaginoplasty outside the U.S. should make preparations with the U.S. State Department well in advance of their expected travel date. I recommend having all necessary papers in hand at least two months before traveling. Be sure to check with them as your travel date approaches to make sure no new requirements have been put in place.

Besides the potential embarrassment of having to explain discrepancies of name or sex in your documentation to airport security or customs officials, discrepancies in documentation may delay or even eliminate your ability to travel. It could also cause problems in the country to which you are traveling and may affect your ability to get back into the U.S.

Although some states allow a name change on a state driver's license without a court order, I strongly recommend getting a court order for name change in order to facilitate any documentation changes, especially federally issued items like passports.

Travel to Canada

In January 2004, I received the following letter:

Since a lot of women go to Bressard and Menard in Canada, this may well be old news, but I thought I'd pass it along since it was from my personal experience last month. Ever since September 11th, US Customs requires a birth certificate or a passport for US citizens to get back into the US when they visit Canada.

They used to just require a drivers license.

My traveling companion and I attempted to go to Vancouver one day and we were advised by "good ol' Duane" (which is my name for Canadian Customs) that it would not be a good idea to continue on into British Columbia without one of these.

The US authorities let us back in, since we turned around right there at the customs site, and they just looked at the drivers license without checking anything further.

But this might be something to tell others about and for them to consider, not just from the viewpoint of going once, but going again and again and having the ID change "suddenly" on the next trip. We do not plan to go back to Canada until after I get a passport that has my correct gender on it. Being from Texas, I may have to wait some years for the birth certificate to change. Rats - and we *so* wanted to visit there, too! Since this was the first time I have traveled to Canada using my new name, I don't want to get logged into their systems as the wrong gender and have to worry about undoing it in the future.

Temporary passports

From a reader in 2004:

I travel about 4 times a year to the UK, and so getting my passport changed was pretty important. I started full-time in July 2003, have my surgery scheduled for June of this year, but I did not want to have to travel under my old name and sex. So I filled out the new passport form that I downloaded from the web, checked the "F" box and included myname change court-order. About a week later I got a call from the passport office telling me that they could issue a temporary (1 year) passport with my new name and "Female" as long as my doctor sent a letter to them stating that I was his patient and had SRS scheduled.

A few days later, I received my new passport with everything as it should be; no aliases, no indication of my transgender status, just a note that this is a temporary passport. I can have the passport extended to the usual 10 year period after surgery when my doctor sends a letter stating that I have had SRS. What is really nice about all this is that I couldn't get my DMV to change the M to an F on my license, but at least now I have one piece of ID that has the correct sex on it.

Also, I should say that the people at the passport agency were incredibly nice about all this, and seemed to have handled this before.

From a reader in May 2006:

Well, I got my passport in the mail today.  And, the U.S. government came through!  I got my 1-year "F" passport!  (I was told they will give me a proper 10-year one after my vaginoplasty is complete (for no extra money).
 
And, I got it FAST!  It was supposed to take about three weeks, but I got it in exactly one week.
 
So, to recap:
 
To get a pre-vaginoplasty, 1-year temporary "F" passport, give the passport official these items:
 
1.  Your current passport (if you have one).
2. A certified copy of your name change court-order (if you are requesting a different name on your new passport than the name on your old passport).
3. A letter from your vaginoplasty surgeon that stipulates the surgery is irreversable.  The letter should also have your surgery date on it.
4. A letter from your therapist that states you should travel on a female passport.  This letter should also give your background info.  (It might be a good  idea to have your therapist confirm that he/she believes you are a good candidate for vaginoplasty surgery.)
 
That's about it.  I brought the items listed above and getting the passport was a breeze.
 
I hope this might aid others.