Deadnames in vaccination certificates

Starting last Saturday, 2G Plus is in effect in many areas of life in Germany, leaving trans and nonbinary people with the choice to either constantly out themselves as such or stop being part of society.

The vast majority of businesses, events and public services, including transport, will require both the digital or paper certificate and an ID as proof of identification.

For many trans and nonbinary people, this brings up lots of fears, worries and restrictions, because the displayed name (the legal name, aka dead name) doesn’t match the names they identify with and use to live their daily life.

All apps that scan those certificates display the full (legal) name of the person. There is no way to anonymize data or to choose which name to display.

At the same time, in Germany it is really difficult for trans and nonbinary people to obtain an ID that matches their name and gender. The outdated Transsexuellengesetz (TSG) is expensive, gender-binary, and requires a court appearance, costly and humiliating psychiatric assessments and a lot of time and money. In recent years, there was an attempt to change the law in the Bundestag, which failed when the SPD reneged on its promises to support it. The long-awaited change is now part of the coalition agreement, and while we hope this time the SPD will stay true to its word, we can’t wait that long to use public transport or take part of day to day life.

We therefore call for the app providers CovPass-App und Corona-Warn-App to come up with a way to allow trans and nonbinary people to choose their display names or avoid displaying a name altogether. This can work as a stopgap measure till the archaic German law is changed and we can get identification documents that reflect our actual identity.

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Last update: 2021.11.29