TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on May 3, 2024

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Thursday over a decades-old Tennessee policy that does not allow transgender people to change the sex designation on their birth certificates, reports the Associated Press. Four transgender Tennesseans first filed the lawsuit in 2019, claiming that the policy is unconstitutional and "subjects transgender people to discrimination, harassment and even violence when they have to produce a birth certificate for identification that clashes with their gender identity." U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson had dismissed the case last year, saying that the term "sex" has a very narrow and specific meaning for the purpose of birth certificates in Tennessee: "external genitalia at the time of birth."