Under a policy change quietly put in place Friday, Texans who obtained court orders to change the sex listed on the birth certificates can no longer do so, a Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson told the NPR affiliate.
However parents still can change birth certificates for children whose sex was incorrectly recorded due to a hospital's mistake or omission, according to the report.
TDSHS's policy change comes roughly a week after the Texas Department of Public Safety enacted a ban on transgender people changing the gender listed on their drivers licenses, except to fix a clerical error. A top voter-education organization warned the new policy will make it harder for trans people to cast ballots in future elections.
The TDSHS updated its birth-certificate policy after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, raised questions about the legitimacy of court orders allowing trans people to alter state documents, according to KUT's report.
Paxton has made repeated efforts to remove protections for LGBTQ+ Texans and has especially targeted trans people. Earlier this year, a court blocked his attempt to demand information from a nationwide LGBTQ+ group about its support for families seeking gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths.
Paxton is now bullying state agencies into creating new hurdles for trans Texans, Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of advocacy group Equality Texas, told the Dallas Morning News of the recent DPS and TDSHS policy changes.
“Life requires lots of paperwork: birth certificates, social security cards, drivers licenses,” Pritchett told the paper via email. “For transgender Texans, many of those documents may hold names that do not reflect who they are, so they need to engage in the tedious and time-consuming process of legally updating their name and gender marker.”
Pritchett added: “Paxton can make life in public a nuisance, but he cannot erase transgender Texans from public life."
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