Another State Joins The Club

Pennsylvania just joined the states where you can change your gender on your birth certificate without surgery.

Trans birth-certificate suit settled
Philadelphia Gay News
By Tim Cwiek
August 9, 2016

Under an updated state policy, trans folks born in Pennsylvania are now permitted to change the gender on their birth certificates without undergoing gender-confirmation surgery.

The updated policy went into effect Aug. 8, said Philadelphia-based trans attorney Julie Chovanes.

With valid identification, a $20 payment and a doctor's verification that the person is transitioning, trans people may now change the gender on their birth certificate without a court order.

The updated policy also permits trans youths to change the gender on their birth certificate, with parental consent.

In May, Chovanes filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two trans people who wanted to change the gender on their birth certificate without undergoing gender-confirmation surgery.

The case was settled on Aug. 8, the same date that the updated state policy went into effect, Chovanes said.

According to the Washington Post,

Today, state policies on this issue differ a great deal. The District of Columbia, New York City and 10 states -- California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Minnesota -- allow individuals who can provide a notarized doctors note that a person has received the treatment deemed necessary by the individual and their doctor to live their life in a way that is consistent with their gender identity to do so.

That's what trans activists call the "modernized standard," because it does not mandate expensive surgery or hormone treatments that every trans person does not want and some along with their doctors do not feel they need. And, that's also the standard required by the Social Security Administration for Social Security cards, as well as U.S. passports and birth certificates issued to Americans born abroad.

But…

Thirty-seven states currently have a higher standard, though -- requiring people to provide medical proof that they have undergone sex reassignment surgery in order to request an altered birth certificate. North Carolina is part of this latter group.

Three states -- Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee -- do not allow changes to birth certificates at all. Tennessee has a state law explicitly forbidding changes to the sex section of a birth certificate. And, this month, lawmakers in Kansas held a hearing to consider a request from officials in that state's health department that would limit changes to birth certificates to rare situations where, as the Associated Press reported, "a person or his or her parents could document that the gender was incorrectly recorded at the time of birth." Kansas health department officials say they are being asked to make changes to birth certificates that extend beyond the authority granted to them by Kansas's 1970s-era birth certificate law.

And there is not any chance of a federal law to require states to change their requirements for birth certificates because birth certificates are the province of the states and federal government has no jurisdiction over them.