Birth Certificates

Yesterday I wrote about the lawsuit that the ACLU filed in Alaska to change the DMV policy requiring surgery in order to change the gender marker on a person’s driver license, well the ACLU just had a victory in Illinois. There they fought to have three people’s birth certificate changed. In a press release the ACLU said…

Individuals Ask Court to Declare Unconstitutional Illinois Vital Records Requirements for Genital Surgery

CHICAGO –Despite promises to the contrary, the Division of Vital Records of the Illinois Department of Public Health has failed to fix its practice of refusing to correct the gender on birth certificates of transgender individuals who have had gender confirmation surgery but not the specific forms of surgery demanded by the department. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Illinois filed a lawsuit today to allow transgender individuals who have not had gender confirmation surgery to correct the gender marker on their birth certificates.
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“We’ve been telling the department for two years that its arbitrary surgery rules clash with the medical standard of care for transgender people and make it impossible for most transgender people to correct the gender on their birth certificates. We took them at their word when they said they would make an appropriate change, but all we’ve seen is more delay. It’s time that they did something to fix that.”
[…]
Two years ago, citing the need to have an accurate birth certificate for identification purposes, two Illinois women first asked a court to order the state to issue new birth certificates that reflect their appropriate and accurate gender following gender confirmation surgery (sometimes described as sex reassignment surgery.) They also sought an accurate birth certificate for a male transgender client who had not had the surgery the department required. At that time the department gave him an amended birth certificate and asked the court to dismiss the case because the department was going to issue rules they strongly suggested would fix the problem. That has not yet happened.

As I have written over and over again, requiring surgery before you can change you birth certificate, results in many trans-people being stuck in a kind of limbo, where they can either not afford the surgery, cannot have the surgery because of medical reasons or they do not need the surgery in order to lead productive lives. This is especially true for trans-men whose surgery is extremely expensive running over a $100,000 and whose surgery is also very risky. To require that extensive surgery in order to change their birth certificate is wrong.

In addition, most companies have an exclusion for anything related to gender confirmation surgery. This I feel is discriminatory. Gender confirmation surgery is not actually one surgery, but is made up of a number of stages that when combined consists the gender conformational surgery and each surgery is a common procedure that are covered by insurance companies. However, when combined into gender confirmation surgery they are no longer covered, which I believe and some courts believe that is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and is also a violation of states anti-discrimination laws.