GOP ID Policies Make It Harder For Trans People To Vote
Huff PostLOADING ERROR LOADING Brandyn Gallagher should be on the road right now. But they did, and it came completely out of left field.” Arkansas is one of at least five states, including Florida, Montana and Texas, to enact policies this year that bar trans and nonbinary people from updating the gender marker on identification documents such as state driver’s licenses or birth certificates. “Now increasingly we’re seeing either categorical barriers being thrown up by agency heads or, at the very least, really onerous barriers that serve no purpose being thrown up so that people have to encounter insurmountable roadblocks, like surgery requirements, in order to be able to change their gender markers,” Peter Renn, an attorney at Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that advocates for LBGTQ+ issues, told HuffPost. “So putting people in a position where they have to out themselves to a gas station cashier at 2 a.m. is a recipe for disaster.” Rowan Fowler, a 49-year-old trans woman, decided to permanently leave Oklahoma because of the state’s rules about birth certificates and the growing hostility toward trans people. Policies that block trans people from updating their identity documents go hand and hand with broader legislative attempts by Republican officials to pass bills defining “male” and “female” based on a person’s reproductive organs and adopt the concept of “biological sex,” which many biology and sex researchers say are not grounded in modern science.
History of this topic
Arkansas’ elimination of ‘X’ as option for sex on licenses and IDs endorsed by GOP lawmakers
Associated Press
Kansas to no longer change transgender people's birth certificates to reflect gender identities
The IndependentThe number of Kansas residents officially changing genders quadrupled this year ahead of a new law
Associated Press
GOP states press voter photo ID rules, with unclear effects
Associated Press
GOP states press voter photo ID rules, with unclear effects
LA TimesDiscover Related
