About a week ago, it came to my attention that the Attorney General of Texas has ordered the Department of Public Safety to stop accepting court orders for gender marker change on a drivers license. I first saw the linked report from Erin Reed on her substack on 22-August-2024.
I no longer live in Texas, so this specific order does not impact me personally. However, it’s weighed heavily on me with regard to my plan to get a legal name and gender change. I was born in Texas, and I have little doubt that this order will ultimately be extended to birth certificates. I’ve seen further reporting on this decision in various outlets, including Them and NBC News. There’s lots of other stories you can find if you search, but they all say basically the same thing.
Texas has been one of the leaders in the attacks on transgender people, with clear intent to eliminate us from existence in the public sphere. This is stage three of the ten stages of genocide. Take away our right to proper identification, and you limit our ability to move through society unharmed.
Is there any way to fight back against this? Transgender people in Texas could file suit in federal court to force the government to rescind this order. It’s early days, and I have not seen any reports of such suits being filed. Given the current condition of the federal courts, I admit to not feeling particularly hopeful of a good outcome, and it would take years to reach whatever outcome.
The journey continues, if a little less hopefully.
An Aging Trans Woman 
Reblogging; it will be up in the AM.
You have your birth certificate done, do I recall correctly? Meanwhile, here’s to ACLU in TX having enough resources to get a suit going. ACLU did help here, though as you say, it took quite a while, and went back and forth a bit. Even with that, every dept. that our AG has authority over cannot make gender changes, and is required to retrofit. I think there’s a suit making its way to the State Supreme Court regarding that, but meanwhile…
The only benefit to having a batcrap crazy Republican legislature is, those departments are so underfunded and understaffed, that retrofitting will not begin soon.
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I received my birth certificate in my dead name. You’re probably remembering how long just that took so that I could get any state ID and register to vote.
I haven’t yet completed my name and gender change on my birth certificate. I’m starting to put together the paperwork for a court order in my current state. Whether or not I will be able to get my birth certificate updated by Texas once I have court order is, at this point, uncertain.
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Yes, you’re correct; I did recall you got one, just not whether it was the accurate one (not the one you received.) It does sound unlikely that TX will be of service in this matter, doesn’t it? sigh
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There’s still the option of just ignoring birth certificate and getting a passport. As things stand now, and assuming a certain orange hateful person isn’t elected, I can get correct name and gender marker on that.
Of course, I will try to get the birth certificate after I get the court order. That’s likely to be early next year
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🤞🤞🖖
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