Montana sued over refusal to change trans people’s identity documents

Two transgender women sued Montana and several state agencies Thursday in a class-action lawsuit challenging a policy that prohibits transgender people from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates to accurately reflect their gender identity.

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services adopted the rule in 2022 after a district court blocked the state from enforcing a 2021 law that allowed individuals to change their birth certificates only in cases where a person’s sex person “has been altered by a surgical procedure”.

State health officials at the time said that despite the court ruling, Montana residents still cannot change their birth certificates because sex is an “immutable genetic fact that cannot be changed, even by surgery.”

In February, the Montana health department announced that the agency would process requests to change sex designations on birth certificates, but only for applicants whose sex was incorrectly identified at birth or whose incorrect sex designation was the result of an error. of the clerks. The agency clarified that it would not change a birth certificate based on “gender transition, gender identity or gender reassignment.”

The state’s amendment process, the agency added, in the future would also be subject to the provisions of Senate Bill 458, a law signed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte in May that rigidly defines sex as being “determined by biological and genetic indication male”. and feminine.”

The law allows trans people to “identify with any gender, but not any sex, they wish,” a spokesperson for Gianforte said. told the Montana Free Press.

The state Department of Justice also this year ended the Montana Motor Vehicle Division’s (MVD) previous practice of allowing an individual to change the sex designation on their state-issued driver’s licenses, which transgender individuals had previously been able to change with a letter from a doctor.

Thursday Process, filed in Montana district court, challenges the 2022 rule, MVD policy, and Senate Bill 458 as it applies to the issuance of altered birth certificates and driver’s licenses. Each of the measures, the lawsuit argues, is “invalid, illegal and unconstitutional.”

The two plaintiffs seek to represent “all trans people born in Montana who currently want, or who in the future will want” to have the sex designation on their identity documents changed “to match what they know to be their sex.” They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Montana and Nixon Peabody LLP.

“After finally being able to live my life openly as the woman I know myself to be, I am frustrated that my birth state of Montana is forcing me to carry a birth certificate that incorrectly lists my sex as male,” Jessica Kalarchik, a veteran of US Army and one of the plaintiffs said Thursday in a statement. “I am being forced to use a birth certificate that is inaccurate and puts me at risk of discrimination and harassment every time I have to present it.”

“I live my life openly as a woman,” Kalarchik added. “I am treated as a woman in my daily life and there is no reason I should be forced to carry a birth certificate that incorrectly identifies me as a man.”