Transgender and transitioning TSA officers will no longer be permitted to perform pat-down searches on passengers, the agency has confirmed, while information designed to reassure transgender passengers passing through airport checkpoints has been deleted from the agency’s website.
As first reported by Gary Leff at View From the Wing, the decision is simply ending a 2021 policy in which the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started to allow transgender and transitioning agents to perform pat-down searches on passengers of the same gender they identified.
Transgender TSA agents will now have to be assigned other roles at the security checkpoint in which they won’t have to lay hands on a passenger.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the TSA confirmed the policy shift, saying: “In compliance with Executive Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, published January 20, 2025, TSA has rescinded a policy from 2021 regarding transitioning and transgender officers.”
“Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat down procedures on male passengers, and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat down procedures on female passengers.”
The debate over transgender rights is, of course, highly contentious, with strong feelings on both sides.
While transgender activists argue this new policy is discriminatory, women’s rights campaigners have long argued that it is unfair that anyone born biologically female should be subjected to a pat-down search or intimate inspection by someone who was born biologically male but self-identifies as female.
Conversely, transgender passengers have also been permitted to demand a pat-down search by a TSA officer of the same gender as how they self-identify, and not necessarily their biological sex at birth.
Airport security checkpoints have long been an issue for transgender passengers, especially with the introduction of advanced passenger imaging technology, which runs gender-based algorithms to detect possible weapons or other contraband and can often show ‘anomalies’ on transgender passengers.
Transgender passengers have long been allowed to refuse to go through the body scanner and request a pat-down search instead. It’s not known whether this policy will also be ditched, although information for transgender passengers has been removed from the TSA’s website.
In 2022, then TSA administrator David Pekoske said the agency was taking steps to improve the airport screening experience for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming airline passengers.
It now looks like those measures are on hold.
Both sides? You’re joking. No one cared until Trump needed to distract his low information voter base from his inability to run a federal government. A sad day for the U.S..