“John Doe” experiences humiliation throughout his life because his personal documents still identify him by his previous female name. With the support of the Transgender Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he has filed a lawsuit to fight an Indiana state law that prohibits legal name changes for non-citizens.
Doe, whose name has been kept anonymous to protect his privacy, is a Mexican citizen who has spent 26 of his 31 years living in the United States. It’s the home that he knows, and he’s been granted Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) status. He’s also been granted asylum because he is transgender, and he has a wife who is a U.S. citizen and a son. Unfortunately, naturalization is still at least three years away, and in the meantime, he fears for his safety and well-being because his documents out him as transgender everywhere he goes.
That’s because in 2010, Indiana passed a law that created new qualifications for a legal name change, including “proof that the person is a United States citizen.” The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Dave Cheatham (D), argued at the time that the legislation “will help reduce the amount of identity theft from people who create new identities (and) make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to create new identities, since the documentation to prove a person’s current identity would be much stricter.” Regardless of whether Cheatham had considered how this bill might impact transgender people, his law has now created a significant burden for Doe.
It’s a unique burden at that. Because his transition changed his appearance, Doe is now recognized as male, and he has even successfully updated his Indiana state ID and immigration documents to identify him with the gender marker “M.” But because he has a traditionally female name, people who check his ID constantly question its validity. He has to explain that it is real and often come out as transgender, which opens him up to additional stigma, discrimination, and potentially violence.
The lawsuit shares several examples of the mistreatment Doe has faced because of the mismatch on his ID. One time, a police officer pulled him over for a minor traffic infraction. The officer was suspicious of his ID and “repeatedly threatened to take him to jail.” Doe had to show a letter from his therapist explaining his transgender status, and though the officer believed him, he was disgusted and annoyed by the “weird situation.” When Doe’s then-girlfriend (now wife) picked him up, the officer said, “You can take I-don’t-know-what-it-is with you.”
On another occasion, Doe went to the emergency room because of pain and immobility in his neck and shoulder. The staff were confused by his ID, then ridiculed him when they learned he was transgender. A group of five nurses gathered around to laugh at him.
Another time, Doe was asked to show his ID at a restaurant where he was attending a family birthday celebration. The waiter laughed at his female name, and when Doe questioned why his name was important when it was simply his age that mattered, the waiter insisted, “This is my restaurant, and I am worried about it!”
Doe shared one more example in an interview with BuzzFeed. “A couple weeks ago, I had to call insurance company to change records, and they wouldn’t talk to me because they said my voice doesn’t match my name,” he said. “I had to go through different procedures to show it was me.”
The lawsuit argues that the restrictive law discriminates on the basis of alienage, but is also even more harmful to transgender people like Doe. Obtaining a name change is medically necessary to reduce his gender dysphoria, and his inability to change his name causes him “severe and ongoing humiliation, emotional distress, pain, suffering, psychological harm, and stigma.”