A transgender woman claimed in a lawsuit that Idaho has violated her free speech rights by refusing to change the gender on her birth certificate.
Idaho’s “stigmatizing refusal” to issue revised birth certificates constitutes a First Amendment violation because it both “prevents transgender individuals from accurately expressing their gender” and violates their “rights… to refrain from speaking by forcing them to disclose their transgender status and to identify with a gender that conflicts with who they are,” the complaint claims.
The 28-year-old, listed only as F.V. in court records, also says that by refusing to issue the revised birth certificate, Idaho “subjects [transgender people] to discrimination, privacy invasions, harassment, humiliation, stigma and even violence.”
Born male, F.V. identified as female from the age of 6 and has lived openly as a woman since 15. Since then, she has “taken steps to bring her body and her gender expression into conformity with her female gender identity,” the complaint says.
F.V. changed her name, including on her driver’s license, passport and Social Security card. She was born in Hawaii, and there, the state issued her a driver’s license that says she’s female. But Idaho’s Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics would not allow her to change the gender listed on her birth certificate.
The complaint says that the male gender listings on F.V.’s current birth certificate have left her “exposed to hostility.” At the Social Security office, she was called a “tranny” and a “faggot,” the complaint says. It also details several other occasions where F.V. was assaulted, harassed or discriminated against because of being transgender.
Lawyers for the state have not yet responded to the complaint filed in the Idaho U.S. District Court.