A transgender immigrant from Mexico who’s been granted asylum in the United States sued three in officials Tuesday, including Donald Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, for enforcing a state law that denies him the right to change his female birth name to his current male name. However, he remains unable to change his legal name in IN because of the 2010 state law that precludes non-citizens, including legal residents, from petitioning the state for a change.
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Before that, in 2013, he had received Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, which allows children who entered the country illegally to stay and receive a work permit.
According to the law center’s release, the plaintiff was born in Mexico as a girl and immigrated to the USA when he was 6-years-old. Unfortunately, naturalization is still at least three years away, and in the meantime, he fears for his safety and well-being because his documents out him as transgender everywhere he goes.
A 2010 IN state law being enforced by Gov. Pence bans Doe from being allowed to change his name, because he is not a USA citizen. The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Dave Cheatham (D), argued at the time that the legislation “will help reduce the amount of identity theft from people who create new identities (and) make it more hard for illegal immigrants to create new identities, since the documentation to prove a person’s current identity would be much stricter”.
It’s a unique burden at that. His gender is recognized as male on all official US documents, the lawsuit said, including his IN state identification and immigration documents. Others question whether the ID is a fake and suggest that he is committing fraud. The officer asked for my ID and then refused to believe it was mine. “I am simply asking for equal treatment under the law”, Mr. Doe said in a statement.
On another occasion, Doe went to the emergency room because of pain and immobility in his neck and shoulder.
“Transgender immigrants essentially out themselves as trans every time they show their IDs if that ID shows the name they were assigned at birth”. Or are they going to laugh at me?
Doe shared one more example in an interview with BuzzFeed.
“A couple weeks ago, I had to call [the] insurance company to change records, and they wouldn’t talk to me because they said my voice doesn’t match my name”.
Until that law is changed, Doe-who underwent hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery starting in 2011-has to live with an ID that shows a photo of a man, a male gender marker, and a female-sounding name.
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Transgender Law Center is the largest national organization dedicated to advancing justice for transgender and gender nonconforming people through litigation, policy advocacy, and public education so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. But under IN law, he still hasn’t been able to change his legal name.
