Federal Register Notices to Leave Public Comments On
Federal Register Notices to Leave Public Comments On
When changes are made to government rules, forms, documents, etc. there is a notice made on the FederalRegister.gov requesting comments from the public. One thing you can do is leave comments on any requests for comment that involves erasing transgender identities or otherwise antagonizing trans people.
Note that public comment means public comment; although you can leave comments anonymously, they are public record and you shouldn't include anything you wouldn't want people to be able to search.
DO state your concerns with the form changes clearly, professionally, and without panic or hyperbole.
DO back them up with either personal stories/experiences or media articles. Links are fine but it is okay to ATTACH a PDF of the media articles to your comment, which makes the article part of the regulatory record.
DON'T copy and paste someone else's comment and just change one or two things - it will be treated as the same comment.
DON'T submit any information within the comment itself that you don't want to be searchable (e.g., you can find my full legal name and work email address on these comments and it's open to the public, so if you don't want that, don't add it to the body of the comment).
DO consider reaching out to your Senators/Reps and ask them to submit a comment as well. Maybe send them a copy of your comment for reference.
DO submit comments even though this will happen anyway because it can help litigators. There's something called the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and it's possible that a bunch of lawyers will be coming through these comments and the government's (non) response and building a case under the APA.
Changes Made to Passport Applications
These three notices involve the changes to passport applications which would require applicants to choose their sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity and would remove the option to request an X rather than an M or F. You should leave public comments on all of these rejecting changes that require trans people to misgender ourselves.
These changes include requiring transgender students to misgender themselves and removing the option to identify as nonbinary; you should leave comments rejecting these updates: