Montana Faces a Hot Button Topic: Here’s Their Response

The Department of Health at Montana has prohibited changes to gender status listed on a birth certificate, even if an individual has undergone a gender reassignment surgery.

This comes after a court had banned the state from enforcing a law that required an individual to have undergone a gender reassignment procedure if they were seeking to alter their documented gender. Additionally, transgender individuals were required to have a court order stating that they would undergo the reassignment procedure prior.

ABC News reported that District Judge Michael Moses of Billings felt the law was “unconstitutionally vague” due to not specifying which procedure would be required for eligibility to have a birth certificate changed.

This decision means that the state was meant to revert back to the 2017 law stating that transgender individuals were allowed to change their birth certification as long as they had filed a sworn affidavit with the health department.

Recently, the health department pushed out an emergency order to announce that it would discontinue issuing birth certificates with an identified “gender” marker and instead, list the sex of the baby on the official document.

The Independent Record shared that the order states how the birth certificate can only be changed “if it was listed incorrectly on the original birth certificate due to a data entry error” rather than “based on gender transition, gender identity or change of gender.”

Apparently, the emergency order was necessary for the department due to it leaving “an ambiguous and uncertain situation” to be overseen.

“This emergency rule is a blatant abuse of power meant to undermine the checks and balances of our independent courts,” said Senate Minority Leader Jill Cohenour and House Minority Leader Kim Abbott via a joint statement. “While this rule is intended to make the lives of our transgender neighbors harder, it impacts all of us by eroding the rights that let us live our lives free from government overreach. There’s no emergency here—just the kind of politics that Montanans hate.”

AP News reports that not all transgender individuals make the decision to undergo surgery due to not only the cost but also personal outlook.

It’s known that birth certificates are used by numerous states across the country to decide what school team an individual is allowed to join.

The American Medical Association publicly called to have the legal gender designation removed on a birth certificate last year, labelling it a discriminatory practice.

Willie Underwood III, MD, who published a report on the subject on behalf of the AMA, told WebMD, “Assigning sex using binary variables in the public portion of the birth certificate fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity.”

Currently, there are 10 states that allow the neutral gender designation ‘X’ to be used on birth certificates.

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