Perry Vandell
Arizona Republic
A lawsuit filed nearly three years ago challenging an Arizona law that required a person to prove they had undergone a “sex change operation” before changing the gender listed on their birth certificate gained class-action status on Thursday.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights, which filed the 2020 lawsuit on behalf of three families with transgender children, announced and lauded the federal court’s decision.
“This ruling means that this case will now benefit all transgender people born in Arizona, not just the individual plaintiffs who originally brought the case,” the NCLR said in a statement.
The San Francisco-based nonprofit cited concerns that transgender people can often be discriminated and persecuted when forced to produce a birth certificate with a listed gender that doesn’t match how they’re presenting.
“Arizona’s outdated surgery requirement is particularly harmful for transgender youth who are effectively barred from correcting the gender marker on their birth certificates because very few transgender young people undergo any surgical treatment,” the organization said. “For young people, their birth certificate affects everything from school records to camp registration.”
