Montana accepting transgender birth certificate changes
Montana will allow transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificates after a court order Monday.
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The state health department has restored the ability for transgender people to apply to correct the gender marker on their Montana birth certificate after a judge blocked enforcement of a law that would have required them to have surgery first.
The gender designation forms are available on the department’s website.
The time to process an application for a birth certificate, or a correction to one, can take several months depending on the circumstances, such as the complexity of the request and how much communication is needed to clarify information, Jon Ebelt, spokesperson for the Department of Public Health and Human Services, said in a statement Thursday.
Montana is required to process the applications after District Judge Michel Moses issued a temporary injunction against enforcing a state law that would have required transgender residents to have undergone a surgical procedure before changing the sex on their birth certificate.
Moses said the law was unconstitutionally vague in April and temporarily blocked its enforcement while the court case continued. However, the state did not begin accepting applications and instead passed a rule saying that nobody could change the sex on their birth record unless there was a clerical error.
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