Photo via Getty Images/Illustration by Jim Small | Arizona Mirror
Republican lawmakers in the Arizona House of Representatives have passed another anti-transgender bill that would bar trans people born in Arizona from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity.
Rep. Rachel Keshel, the Tucson Republican and member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus who sponsored the bill, claimed that its purpose was only to bring the state’s birth certificate law in line with the U.S. Constitution and to protect “the integrity and accuracy of vital records.”
But multiple Democratic lawmakers pointed out that her claims were untrue.
“I’m really frustrated with this, because this is blatantly anti-trans, and there’s no question about it,” Rep. Brian Garcia, D-Tempe, said on Feb. 6 when the House Judiciary Committee considered the bill.
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Garcia echoed the comments of Rep. Alma Hernandez, D-Tucson, who said during her seven years as a lawmaker she’d seen bill after bill from her Republican colleagues targeting the trans community.
She accused the Republicans who backed the anti-trans proposals of espousing the right to individual freedom — but only when it’s convenient for them and when it aligns with their personal beliefs. When it comes to transgender people, they go out of their way to deny them individual rights.
House Bill 2438 passed the House on Feb. 19 by a vote of 33-26 — only Republicans supported it — and now heads to the Arizona Senate for consideration.
The bill is likely to pass through the Republican-controlled Senate but will almost certainly be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has promised to block all anti-transgender proposals that make it to her desk.
Another anti-trans proposal, House Bill 2062, which would enshrine a narrow definition of biological sex into state law based on a person’s physical reproductive characteristics, passed through the House last week.
Keshel’s bill would remove from Arizona law the option for transgender people to amend the gender markers on their birth certificates to align with their gender identity, and instead only allow for changes if the original information on the certificate was “factually inaccurate at the time of recordation.”
I don’t have a constitutional right to have a different birthday on my birth certificate… (because) maybe I don’t like my horoscope.
– Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale
On Feb. 5, several Republicans who backed the bill claimed that those changes were aimed at bringing Arizona law in line with the U.S. Constitution. Keshel and Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, both said the bill was in response to a federal judge last year striking down Arizona’s requirement for transgender people to undergo gender transition surgery before changing the gender markers on their birth certificates.
In August, U.S. District Court Judge James Soto ruled that the law violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. He also said that requiring transgender minors who have not undergone gender reassignment surgery to use birth certificates that don’t align with their expressed gender identity would involuntarily “out” them as transgender every time they have to present a birth certificate, disregarding their right to privacy.
Kolodin claimed HB2438 would make Arizona’s laws constitutional, based on a ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last summer that upheld a Tennessee law that treats the sex listed on a birth certificate as an unchangeable historical fact.
Kolodin and Keshel disregarded portions of Soto’s ruling on the Arizona law, specifically when he wrote that it violated the equal protection clause because those who aren’t transgender “are not presented with the unlawful choice of being stripped of their bodily autonomy or face discrimination, harassment, and potential violence.”
I exist. We exist. I did not choose to be transgender — nobody does. The unnecessary, unceasing effort by the Arizona state legislators to deny and eradicate our existence is genocide at its worst and bigotry at its best.
– Paul Bixlar, the first openly transgender woman to be elected to an Arizona school board
A transgender woman who spoke to the Judiciary Committee as it debated the bill on Feb. 5 told lawmakers that Soto in no way implied in his ruling that banning all transgender people from changing their gender markers would bring Arizona’s law in line with the Constitution.
“There is no reading of the decision that would imply that the court would tolerate a total denial of the ability of transgender people to amend the sex on their birth certificate,” Erica Keppler told the lawmakers.
Keppler added that having a birth certificate that doesn’t match their legal name or outward identity could impact a person’s ability to prove their citizenship and to vote.
“I am a transgender woman,” Paul Bixlar, the first openly transgender woman to be elected to an Arizona school board, told the committee Feb. 5. “I exist. We exist. I did not choose to be transgender — nobody does. The unnecessary, unceasing effort by the Arizona state legislators to deny and eradicate our existence is genocide at its worst and bigotry at its best.”
Bixlar served on the Liberty Elementary School Governing Board for four years before resigning just before the end of her term in December.
Chairman of the Committee Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, who escaped Vietnam just days before the fall of Saigon, told Bixlar that she should take more consideration before using the term genocide.
During the same meeting, Keshel said that HB2438 aligned with the first executive order of President Donald Trump’s second administration, issued Jan. 20, which sought to erase transgender and nonbinary identities in the eyes of the federal government.
Several lawsuits have been filed challenging the executive order, including the portion that ordered the federal government to stop issuing passports with amended gender markers.
During discussions about Keshel’s bill in committee on Feb. 5 and on the House floor on Feb. 19, Kolodin mocked transgender Arizonans’ desire to have a birth certificate that reflects their gender identity.
“I don’t have a constitutional right to have a different birthday on my birth certificate,” Kolodin said during committee on Feb. 5, because “maybe I don’t like my horoscope.”
Instead, he said, lawmakers should choose to view gender as an immutable physical quality equal to sex, which he described as the “sane Republican way.”
Scientists who study human biology and medicine use the term sex when referring to biology and gender when referring to “self-representation influenced by social, cultural, and personal experience,” according to Yale School of Medicine.
In speaking against the bill during a debate on Feb. 17 and during voting on Feb. 19, Rep. Patty Contreras, a Phoenix Democrat and co-chair of the Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus, pointed out that the bill did nothing to tackle the most pressing issues facing Arizonans like the lack of affordable housing or the future of the state’s water supply.
Only 30 people officially registered in support of the bill, while 336 signed in against it.
“This bill would erase transgender men and women,” Contreras said before voting against the bill on Feb. 19. “This bill would make it difficult for transgender men and women to live and work in their communities as the true human beings that they are. They are here, still human and deserving of love and rights. Having documents such as birth certificates that do not accurately reflect the person’s gender identity will impact their daily life.”
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