Jackson Heights, NY

I am an openly transgendered woman of Korean birth and United States citizenship who lives in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in western Queens. In February 2009, I experienced an incident of discrimination involving an employee of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) while passing through a security check in the C terminal at Denver International Airport (DIA) to catch a flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW).

At approximately 10:45 a.m. on February 2, when I reached the security check point a TSA employee checked my driver's license, which apparently puzzled him, as he did not immediately see the resemblance between me and the photo. While I was assigned to the male sex at birth, I now live as an openly transgendered woman, but I have not applied to change the name or the legal sex designation on my driver's license. Like many, if not most transgendered people, I present in a gender that does not obviously match the image or the legal sex designation on my government-issued identity documents (including my driver's license).

After looking at my photo and then at me, the TSA employee then called over to a TSA colleague of his who was standing several feet away. Rather than asking me directly about what he apparently perceived to be a discrepancy between my photo ID and my gender presentation, the TSA employee called over to his female colleague, saying in a derisive tone, "Take a look at this one." They had a conversation in which the employee used male pronouns when he referred to me, even though I clearly present as a woman. He then continued to address me in an extremely disrespectful tone as I went through the check point.

I would note that the City of Denver added gender identity and gender expression to its human rights ordinance in 2001, thus prohibiting discrimination against transgendered and gender-variant people, as did the State of Colorado in 2007.

While there is as yet no explicit statutory protection in federal law against discrimination based on gender identity or expression, it is my understanding that federal government agencies such as the TSA routinely abide by state and local non-discrimination laws such as are already in place in Denver and Colorado and thus applicable to the TSA's operations at DIA.

Even if no such state or local ordinance were in place in Denver or Colorado, it would seem to me that the TSA's ostensible commitment to courtesy and professionalism in the treatment of all passengers who fly through US airports would provide a compelling basis for showing the same courtesy and professionalism to transgendered as well as to non-transgendered passengers who pass through security checks staffed by TSA employees.