Over 700 New Yorkers have changed their gender on vital records following rule change
Survey shows fewer than 10 percent of transgender people have successfully changed their gender on birth certificates
A total of 731 New York City residents have changed their gender identity on their birth certificates following a rule that made it easier for transgender people to change the marker on vital records, reports the New York Daily News.
According to numbers released by the New York City Health Department, 55 percent of applicants changed their gender marker to female, and 45 percent changed theirs to male. Applicants ranged from five to 76 years old.
Forty-one of those who changed their gender marker were under the age of 18 and had their changed gender markers approved with parental consent.
The Health Department and the City Council made changes to the requirements to change one’s gender marker in 2014. The rule went into effect in 2015.
Last year, the Health Department issued the first ever birth certificate in the United States where a person’s gender was marked as intersex.
Gretchen Van Wye, the head of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, told the Daily News that, prior to the policy, people who were transgender, or whose gender identity didn’t match their biological sex at birth, could have problems obtaining jobs and getting other identification documents. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, nearly one-third of respondents whose identity documents or vital records do not match their gender identity have been discriminated against, harassed, or denied services.
“If you’re presenting as a male, but your birth certificate says female, that’s going to create an opportunity for discrimination,” Van Wye said.
Several states require a court order to obtain a change in gender marker, and others require a person to undergo transition surgery before such a change can be made. Still other states prohibit changing a person’s birth gender on vital records entirely.
As a result, only 18 percent of transgender people in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey had been able to successfully change their name on their birth certificate, and only 9 percent had been able to change their gender marker on their birth certificate.
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