By Dennis DeLeon and Pauline Park, originally published on the September 07, 2007 issue of New York Blade

Transgendered people who live in a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth face pervasive discrimination in employment, housing, social services, health care, and public accommodations as well as travel when their personal identification documents appear inconsistent with their gender presentation.

In 2002, New York City became the 43rd jurisdiction in the United States to enact a statute explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender expression; today, there are 95 such jurisdictions, including 86 localities and nine states.

However, non-discrimination legislation does not address one important aspect of public policy: issuing new birth certificates to those who are living in a gender other than that assigned to them at birth. The birth certificate is the governing identity document in our legal system, and those who cannot get the legal sex designation on that document changed still face the possibility of discrimination even if they have been able to get that “gender marker” changed on other documents.