In Montana, a Republican-led administration is backtracking, with the health department saying it will temporarily allow transgender people to change the gender on their birth certificates.
This happened after a judge reprimanded state health officials for making “calculated violations” of his order earlier this year to temporarily stop enforcing a state law that would prevent transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificate.
District Judge Michael Moses said he would promptly consider motions for contempt based on continued violations of his April order which the Republican-run state said it would defy.
Moses initially blocked a law passed that would require transgender residents to undergo surgical procedures and obtain a court order before being able to change the sex on their birth certificates. But Moses said this law was unconstitutionally vague.
But instead of returning to a 2017 rule that allowed transgender residents to file an affidavit with the health department to correct the gender on their birth certificates, the state released a new rule saying a person’s gender could not be changed at all, except if there are clerical errors.
For Moses, the state engaged “in needless legal gymnastics to attempt to rationalize their actions and their calculated violations of the order.”
