The Courts

One of the states that wouldn’t budge on changing birth certificates was Ohio but the court has said enough is enough…

Thompson Hine Helps Overturn 'Unequal' Transgender Policy
Law 360
By Michael Phillis
February 7, 2021


The ACLU of Ohio, along with attorneys at Thompson Hine LLP and Lambda Legal, recently successfully challenged Ohio's policy forbidding transgender people from correcting their birth certificates to match their gender identity, convincing a judge that the state's policy was discriminatory.

Driver's licenses and other documents could reflect an individual's real identity, but around 2016, Ohio started refusing to allow people to correct what plaintiffs called the "gender marker" on their birth certificate, according to Elizabeth Bonham, an attorney with the ACLU of Ohio. Advocates thought there was no legitimate reasoning behind the policy and sued in 2018, challenging a state approach they said made life for transgender people more difficult.

Having proper ID is vital now a days because of the Real ID Act and laws requiring to show proof of citizenship for employment.

Transgender plaintiffs said being forced to keep an incorrect sex identification on their birth certificate meant being outed, harassed by co-workers and demeaned. One plaintiff said human resources told her she would "always be a man in God's eyes."

But in late last year the federal court overturned the law preventing us from changing our birth certificate.

The state argued the plaintiffs were trying to use constitutional arguments "to engage in a revision of a historical fact" even though "plaintiffs' biological sex was accurately recorded at birth," according to court documents. Allegations that birth certificates outing transgender people constitute a due process privacy right violation should fail because the documents are public record and the plaintiffs' couldn't show the disclosure "is directly linked to a threat of extreme and specific physical harm," the state said.

The state also said equal protection arguments were flawed because the point of the policy was not to discriminate and even if transgender people are a protected class, "defendants have a substantial interest in accurately recording a person's sex on their birth certificate."

Judge Watson rejected those arguments, saying there is "no logical connection between the policy and proffered justifications."

"Defendants' policy prohibits transgender people the ability to change the sex on their birth certificate in an arbitrary and unequal manner," the opinion said.

When we were trying to pass the law to allow us to change our birth certificate here in Connecticut, the opposition kept on saying it was a “historic” document while we argued that the document is used to show legal citizenship and for employment and that it should be kept current to reflex our gender. That it would also prevent discrimination.

There are still a few states that are holding out the changes to the birth certificate, some still require surgery which for many is impossible because of health reasons or because of finical reasons.

  

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This afternoon I am talking to a trans woman and her therapist about how to change legal documents and what is the best order to change them. Hopefully the roads, sidewalks, and parking lots will be cleared of the snow by the time I have to drive into Hartford for the conference call.