The institutionalized levering of data poses an urgent threat for everyone—not just for the transgender and gender diverse community that increasingly relies on digital spaces for crucial information, services, and connection, and already faces systemic barriers to entry.

In a digitized society, passport data feeds into countless systems, from travel and financial services to security checks. When an official document misrepresents a person’s identity and forces transgender and gender diverse individuals to carry IDs that contradict their day-to-day lives, it undermines both personal security and data integrity. Requiring individuals to carry mismatched IDs heightens the risk of harassment, discrimination, and potential violence during travel, when obtaining employment, or when interacting with law enforcement.

The new federal policy fosters dangerous interactions while embedding identity inconsistency into federal record-keeping, all to prioritize a politicized and inaccurate definition of gender over a citizen’s identity. This erasure is additionally harmful at a time when LGBTQ+ individuals need so badly to be accurately counted, to help ensure against bias and drive resources to where they are needed the most.

The DOJ has also leveraged federal fraud statutes to extract sensitive patient data in another recent aggressive policy action targeting the privacy of the transgender and gender diverse community. In its sweeping investigations into healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care for minors, the DOJ has relied on the False Claims Act (FCA) and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) to systematically extract sensitive patient data from providers.

In July, the DOJ announced it had sent over 20 subpoenas to doctors, hospitals and clinics across the nation. These investigations are focused on numerous civil and criminal theories, including “miscoding” or “misbilling,” alleging that providers may have committed fraud by using diagnosis codes for covered conditions—like an endocrine disorder—instead of gender dysphoria, to ensure payment for treatments such as hormone therapy. The strategy of leveraging existing laws has already had a profound chilling effect, contributing to several major hospital systems’ decision to halt or severely restrict the provision of gender-affirming care.