Transgender people can now get correct birth certificates

Excellent news.

Last week, Texas began giving trans people the option of sealing their old birth certificates and issuing new ones, according to Dallas attorney Katie Sprinkle.

Previously, Texas issued amended certificates and those were only issued with a surgeon’s letter. Now, Texas is sealing old records and issuing new birth certificates with a court order. That makes getting accurate documents earlier in the transition process possible.

The change is part of the Texas marriage equality ruling. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ordered Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics to issue corrected death certificates for same-sex couples acknowledging their relationship as “spouse” rather than significant other.” That affected inheritance.

As part of that motion filed by a Conroe, Texas gay man, Garcia asked the attorney if Texas was treating LGBT people differently than straight people on other documents. The attorney said birth certificates needed to be addressed.

As part of its update of birth certificates reflecting both adoptive parents or parents who used a surrogate, Texas updated its policy on reissuing birth certificates to trans men and women.

Since a court order can be used to prove a couple are both the parents of a child and should both be on a birth certificate, a court order will suffice for a trans person to use to get a new birth certificate reissued.

And since the original birth certificate in an adoption is sealed, the original birth certificate for a trans person will also be sealed.

See here and here for some background. You may recall that this issue nearly got Ken Paxton held in contempt, but in the end he folded and justice was served. A court order is still needed to get these updated birth certificates, and it may take a couple of weeks to go through. See a lawyer if this is something you might want or need to do.

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