Along with government-issued IDs, such as passports, driver’s licenses, and social security cards, one of the most consequential documents in most people’s lives are their credit reports. These determine everything from someone’s ability to buy a home or car to, in many cases, their ability to get a job. In fact, there are few aspects of a person’s life that aren’t impacted, in some way, by the information credit reporting agencies collect and report about them.
So it is particularly harmful when those same credit reporting agencies can’t – or won’t – update credit reports to reflect a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct name, even when that person requests such a change. And unlike the list of government documents mentioned above, there is no process or requirement that credit reporting agencies do so. The result is a system of widespread potential harm that gives reporting agencies a pass for such especially discriminatory, and exceptionally harmful, inaction.
That’s why my organization, Public Justice, is proud to join the Name Acknowledgement Means Everything (NAME) Coalition in supporting H.R. 8478, The Credit Reporting Accuracy After a Legal Name Change Act, which will prohibit deadnaming in consumer reports and also improve accuracy in credit reporting so that trans and nonbinary people can have their credit history follow them after their name change. H.R. 8478 is being spearheaded by Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Katie Porter – two vocal champions of transgender equality – as a way to ensure transgender and nonbinary people don’t face obstacles in securing housing or employment because of erroneous credit reports.
Among other things, the bill would prohibit credit bureaus from disclosing a consumer’s deadname in a credit report after the consumer notifies them that they have legally changed their name. If passed, the bill would fix issues that trans and nonbinary experience after a legal name change, including discrimination in credit, housing, and employment; ensuring clear & effective processes to allow trans and nonbinary consumers to update consumer reports with their new legal name; ensuring information in consumers’ prior name is included in their current reports; and ensuring improved access to housing, jobs, and credit for trans & nonbinary people by preventing unfair denials that result from a loss of credit history or score after a name change.
Credit reporting agencies already do all of these things, for example, for consumers whose last names change as a result of marriage. There is no reason – and no excuse – why they cannot do the same for trans and nonbinary people following their own name change in connection with a gender transition.
As the Coalition pointed out in a recent letter to Congress, “A review of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database by the NAME Coalition has uncovered more than 60 accounts from individuals who changed their names describing issues with the “Big Three” credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. In addition to these complaints, a separate story collection organized by the NAME Coalition about this problem has elicited 45 stories from transgender and nonbinary people describing issues with their credit reports as of July 2022.” The result was that many transgender and nonbinary people had “fragmented credit files, inaccuracies in their credit report, drops in their credit score, and inability to access their credit files after a legal name change.”
For a community already facing high rates of unemployment, poverty, housing discrimination and lack of access to credit and other financial and economic opportunities, this additional, discriminatory hurdle can be especially traumatic and harmful.
And the impact of this simple, commonsense fix would be extraordinary: Over 420,000 transgender people in the United States alone have changed their legal names, as have more than 132,000 nonbinary people—and all of them may be impacted by this bill.
For all of those reasons, we believe it is imperative that Congress pass, and President Biden sign into law, H.R. 8478. Credit reporting agencies must not be allowed to so negatively impact trans and nonbinary lives when fixing this systemic discrimination is so simple and easy to do.
To send a letter to your elected Representatives, encouraging them to vote ‘yes’ on H.R. 8478, click here