Judge Blocks Montana Law Limiting Gender Marker Changes

metroweekly.com:

signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte last year, requires people seeking to amend the gender marker on their birth certificate to undergo a “surgical procedure” but is vague about what type of surgical procedure they must obtain.The law also requires transgender individuals to obtain a court order attesting to the fact that they’ve undergone surgery of some type, and submit it to the Department of Public Health and Human Services, which would then “certify” the gender transition and allow the birth certificate to be amended.Because he could grant a temporary injunction based on the vagueness issue alone, Moses said he did not have to further examine the constitutionality of other aspects of the law, and issued an injunction prohibiting the state from seeking to enforce the law until the case has been fully resolved in the courts.“Plaintiffs provided unrebutted evidence describing that neither gender-affirming surgery nor any other medical treatment that a transgender person undergoes changes that person’s sex,” Moses wrote, according to the Associated Press. “Instead, gender-affirming surgery aligns a person’s body and lived in experience with the person’s gender identity, which already exists.”Last July, a transgender man and women filed a lawsuit challenging the new law, arguing that the state is not qualified to recommend specific medical procedures — which can be expensive and medically unnecessary — to obtain before changing their gender marker.

They also argued that the law’s provisions blocking them from obtaining documents that match their gender identity place them at risk of danger from people who may wish to retaliate against transgender individuals, and that cisgender Montanans can make changes their birth.