Texas officials are seeking to reverse the gender marker changes that trans people have already legally obtained on their driver’s licenses and state IDs, according to a letter that the head of the state’s Department of Public Safety sent to the Texas attorney general.
Transgender Texans used to be able to change their names and gender markers on state documents by filing a petition to a judge for a court order. The process was fairly simple and involved providing evidence such as a letter from a therapist or documentation from a surgeon or gender-affirming care provider.
But in August, after the state attorney general’s office raised concerns about the “validity of court orders” being used for gender marker changes, the Department of Public Safety quietly issued a policy barring individuals from updating their gender markers even if they had officially amended their birth certificates or received court-ordered changes.
The director of the department, Steve McCraw, seems to now be seeking permission to make changes to IDs issued before the new rules went into effect.
In mid-September, he sent a letter to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, asking if the agency can “voluntarily” change back gender markers on state IDs and driver’s licenses.
Petitions for court orders involve the individual seeking a name or gender marker change from a Texas judge. McCraw noted that DPS is not a party in those proceedings, and he asked if the agency is compelled to follow these court-ordered gender marker changes even though DPS’s internal policy has now barred them.
He also asked for guidance on what constitutes “satisfactory proof” for those changes and argues that court orders are essentially insufficient “proof” of one’s gender transition because sex is a “fixed and biological fact.” McCraw cites a definition of sex from a 1949 edition of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, indicating that a person’s chromosomal makeup alone determines…
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