Federal officers who staff security checkpoints at U.S. airports need more training on how to screen transgender passengers and should adopt new procedures to ensure transgender people can travel without "humiliation or degradation," 32 Democratic members of Congress wrote in a letter to the Transportation Security Administration on Thursday.

"While being mindful of enacting the appropriate security precautions to keep all travelers safe, the TSA must also take steps to ensure that its employees are prepared to serve transgender individuals with the dignity, discretion, and respect that they, like all Americans, deserve," says the letter to TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger.



The letter is from Reps. Adam Schiff, Mark Pocan, and Brian Higgins, along with 29 more Democrats in the House.



The missive comes two weeks after Shadi Petosky, a transgender woman, was detained in the Orlando airport when her a body-scanner image apparently conflicted with her female gender. “When I stepped out, they said they had detected an anomaly,” Petosky told BuzzFeed News in an interview at the time. “I told the officer that I was transgender and that was my penis.”

TSA agents called her a man, she said, and kept her for a security inspection and pat-down. She detailed the experience on Twitter, including missing her flight.

TSA officials insisted their officers had complied with agency standards.