New Laws Effectively Ban Transgender People from Voting

Don't most states have some process of changing your registered gender on the id? This site has a list of the states that have some sort of process:
Changing Sex on Drivers License

 

Typical Republican back-handed and insidious trick!

Well that figures...

 

Of those states in the map on the link, the three ones where it would make the most difference would probably be Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, as they are all swing states while the others are solid Republican.

 

I think this is good grounds to challenge the law in court. Has anyone who is trans filed suit or spoken to a lawyer?

 

The amount of dread this fills me with... Well, we all knew we still had work to do.

 

I know in my state, you must have "surgery or other treatment", a letter of recomendation from both the surgeon and a physician stating that the "sex designation" has been changed. However when you call people who work for the state (and I've asked others to do this for me as well and they've gotten the same vague answers)to ask what "other treatment" means they say hormones aren't enough and that you need surgery. And those surgeries usually aren't covered by insurance and are expensive enough that they aren't easy to get even for people who want it.

They are also awfully avoidant of clarifying what surgery is good enough for the gender marker to be changed and they sure as heck do no want to define "sex designation." They just start repeating other vague stuff they've already said ad noseum if you ask that.

Identification is just so frustrating. There's so many hoops that they make you jump through and first you gotta struggle to actually find out what hoops you gotta jump through. It's just so unfair, if someone is living full time it shouldn't matter, that wrong gender marker ends up causing so much nervousness and probably less safety. I just don't see why other people get to tell me they know what's best for me or that they know the one real way for me to actually be a woman. And I'm sure Trans men probably face a lot of the same challenges with lots of hoops and stuff. Voter ID laws and unfairly high standards/burdens for changing gender markers just plain suck...end venting session.

 

That is discriminatory and ridiculous. I have a transgender friend (female to male) who has recently gotten his license changed and it was a dehumanizing headache to say the least. There are too many hoops to jump through and no one even seems to know what the hoops are so they just make up random stuff at the DMV based on whatever their personal prejudices are.

He was told something similar to the above initially that you had to have had surgery and a doctor had to sign off that you had undergone sex reassignment. Later he was told that you had to have had your genitals specifically changed or some other BS. Not only can many trans folks not afford surgery, some simply choose not to have it or are not candidates for medical reasons. He chose to only do top surgery and at least for now is not doing hormones. Why shouldn't people be allowed to make those choices without the penalty of having an ID that doesn't match their gender or not being able to vote?

It eventually got straightened out but I can't imagine having to justify the configuration of my genitals to have my gender accurately represented on my driver's license.

 

That's really fucked up, and it should be challenged in the courts. It would be kind of tricky, because none of those states are in the Ninth Circuit (where judges who know what the Fourteenth Amendment means sit). However, it's quite possible that a challenge would be successful, because it would only require a court to adopt a position of heightened rather than strict scrutiny while evaluating the law.

 

B-b-b-but ever since don't ask don't tell got repealed we were supposed to get more rights!

 

I don't think this law is discriminatory. From what I've read on the National Conference of State Legislatures' website: Voter ID: State Requirements
some states are only checking photo-ID's, but none of them are checking your gender. Even in the "strictest" states like Alabama or Texas, a student or employee ID issued by the gov't is acceptable, and gender is not listed on those ID's. Many people don't have driver's licenses or passports, so other photo ID's (without gender) are acceptable. That leaves the ultimate decision to the poll workers to decide whether your photo matches what you currently look like. There are many constitutional rights at stake when you are at the poll, and for the poll worker to deny your right to vote because you are a different gender than your listed one can result in major backlashing.

 

Whether or not you are allowed to serve in the military is totally and utterly unrelated to whether or not you are required to show restrictive voter ID. Especially since the amount of transgender people affected is minuscule to the amount of poor, nonwhite people affected, the real group these laws are meant to restrict. The transgender people are just collateral damage of the direct attack upon poor voters.

 

First they tried to make it hard for blacks to vote, then legal latinos, and now transgendered citizens...

I am going to say it again: the republican party needs to move to Iran, which shares their extremist views towards minorities. let us leave america to people who understand that we are a nation of many, not the slave of the few.

 

That's a really messed up law, and I agree that it needs to be changed. But may I suggest if this law applies to the state you live in that you just dress in a gender-neutral manner when you go vote? As long as you're not blatantly dressing the opposite sex I don't see how they could turn you away. Can't go wrong with jeans and a t-shirt.

 

Yeah, but I personally am not going to get painful, expensive surgery I might not even want just to be able to change a letter on a piece of plastic.