Just another problem that would be exacerbated by a bathroom bill.
In order to modify a birth certificate in Texas, the Department of State Health Services requires transgender individuals to present a certified court order stating the recorded sex on a birth certificate should be changed.
But a transgender person’s ability to obtain that court order is largely determined by where they live and their socioeconomic status, according to transgender individuals, advocates and lawyers who have worked with transgender Texans on the process.
Some county judges — even in more liberal urban areas — are less eager than others to grant the court order that’s required by the state, particularly when it comes to children. That forces some transgender individuals to travel to counties like Travis, Bexar or Dallas, where such court orders can be easier to obtain.
It can also be an expensive process. Court filings fees can reach $300 even before adding on attorneys fees or travel requirements. The process can be even more cost-prohibitive for transgender individuals because they must also obtain letters from both a doctor and a mental health provider certifying they are transgender and under their care to present to the court. For some, that also presents a geographic barrier because Texas faces a shortage of doctors and therapists “who do this kind of work,” said Claire Bow, an Austin-area attorney who helps transgender people obtain updated documents.
But for Bow, there’s a bigger flaw with Republicans’ proposals for bathroom restrictions and the expectation that transgender people could immediately take steps to obtain updated documents.
“The important thing to understand is it’s never the first step in the process,” Bow said of amending birth certificates or IDs. Bathroom bills assume that every transgender person has “gone all the way through the process” or have reached the point in treatment at which their doctors and therapists will sign off on the letter needed for court.
“That’s why this is hard,” she added. “Nobody wakes up one day…and changes their sex.”
The outcome of this complex process is that many transgender Texans live with birth certificates that don’t align with their gender identity for years if not their entire lives.
This is not the first time this issue has been brought up. Getting one’s birth certificate amended can be expensive and time-consuming, and if you happen to have been born in the wrong state, legally impossible. One way Republicans could address this issue would be to make it less cumbersome to amend a birth certificate, with some provision for the folks whose home states have no such mechanism. Of course, if they were inclined to do that, it might lead them to the conclusion that the bathroom bill is ridiculous and harmful and serves no purpose.