Texas Officials Seek To Reverse Transgender ID Changes

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chromosomal makeup alone determines their sex — a definition that biologists and legal advocates say is not only outdated but also completely overlooks the existence of people with chromosomal or intersex conditions.

It remains to be seen whether Paxton will respond to McCraw’s questions and concerns about the authority of state courts.

Neither Paxton’s office nor the Department of Public Safety responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

“DPS has already changed their policy on gender marker updates, and only now are they asking if it is legal?” Brad Pritchett, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas, told HuffPost. “The request from DPS for a nonbinding legal opinion about the status of court orders to update gender markers underscores the chaos that has resulted from Paxton’s haphazard attack on the trans community in Texas.”

When DPS rolled out its policy over the summer, it created an almost “total blockade on the use of court orders” to affect both name and gender maker changes for trans Texans, said Helena Braden, the media director of San Antonio Gender Association, a nonprofit trans support and advocacy group.

Paxton has long sought data on the number of Texans who have requested gender marker changes for their licenses. In 2022, he requested a list of individuals who have changed their gender, but DPS officials told Paxton at the time that the data “neither exists nor could accurately be produced.”

But the policy DPS adopted in August could make that data collection easier, Braden said.

The policy directs DPS employees to send the names and identification numbers of people requesting gender marker changes to an internal DPS email address and for employees to “scan into the record” all documentation about court-ordered changes.

“They seem to be using any of those [requests] that are presented to them to compile a semi-secret list … from everything that we can gather, pointed at publishing in the next legislative session in support of anti-trans legislation,” Braden said.

Paxton has requested wide swaths of data about transgender residents. He has investigated hospitals, LGBTQ+ organizations and providers of gender-affirming care, and has sought medical data of Texans who reside both in and out of the state. He has also likened gender-affirming care for youth to “child abuse” in a nonbinding legal opinion, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott cited in a letter instructing the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care for their children.

“Paxton is the bull in the china shop — willing to trample anything in his path, including undermining the power of Texas courts, in his reckless campaign to make life difficult for trans people,” Pritchett said.

Braden said it seems “fiscally infeasible” for the department to roll back every legally obtained gender marker change on a state ID or license, but she expects that DPS will try to do so and that it especially will try to target people who need to renew their licenses.

In the meantime, Braden, who runs the largest trans support group in the area, urges trans Texans who still need to update their documents to try to do so ― and to obtain separate court orders for a legal name change and a legal gender marker change. That way, she says, people can at least update their driver’s licenses with their correct name even if they are barred from using the court order for a gender marker change. She also urges people to update their Social Security cards and passports, which are federal documents, and for new state residents to update their birth certificates in their home state first, which can be used to obtain the correct gender marker on a new state driver’s license.

“I hear just an incredible amount of despondency about the situation. Several folks who were thriving before suddenly are wondering if there’s even a future for them in Texas,” said Braden, who was not able to update her birth certificate because of a separate new anti-trans policy in the state. “The mood in the community is that of expecting to be refugees if they’re expecting to survive at all.”

Texas is one of at least five states, along with Florida, Montana, Arkansas and Missouri, to enact policies that bar trans people from updating their driver’s licenses, birth certificates and state IDs ― and some legal experts believe that these actions violate federal law.