Emily Bray was supposed to be celebrating on Tuesday morning. After years of trying to change her name and gender marker, the 27-year-old YouTuber received an official court order from a Texas judge that she was at last, in the eyes of the state, the woman she had long known herself to be.
But that elation was short-lived.
An hour later, she logged onto the private Facebook group where she and other trans Texans discussed the bureaucracy of changing one’s name and gender in a state that is becoming increasingly hostile to trans people. One person shared that they had gone into the Department of Public Safety to update their driver’s license that day and learned that the agency had issued a new policy, barring the use of court orders or birth certificates to change one’s listed sex.
“There’s no other way to describe it than a gut punch,” Bray told HuffPost.
On Tuesday, Sheri Gipson, the chief of Texas’ Driver License Division, sent an email to employees notifying them that the department would no longer update the sex marker listed on state driver’s licenses, even if people had officially updated their birth certificates or received court orders by a judge.
The new policy change was prompted by the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s recent concerns about “the validity” of court orders, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“Neither DPS nor other government agencies are parties to the proceedings that result in the issuance of these court orders, and the lack of legislative authority and evidentiary standards for the Courts to issue these orders has resulted in the need for a comprehensive legal review by DPS and the OAG,” the statement read.
The internal DPS email also directs employees to send the names and identification numbers of people requesting a change, and to “scan into the record” all documentation about court-ordered sex marker changes to an internal email address with the subject line “Sex Change Court Order.”
It is unclear how this information will be used. But two years ago, the Republican attorney general previously sought data from the DPS about how many Texans had changed the legal sex marker on their licenses.
Paxton has long targeted trans Texans, launching various investigations into hospitals, LGBTQ+ organizations and providers, and has likened gender-affirming care for youth to “child abuse.” At the time of Paxton’s request two years ago, a DPS spokesperson told The Washington Post that the data could not be “accurately produced” and the agency hadn’t sent any to Paxton’s office.
Bray said that Paxton’s actions and the increasing number of anti-trans laws and policies in the state have made her seriously consider having to leave.
“I have had to live with the knowledge, basically since I came out, that despite Texas being my home, where my niece, my best friend and my family lives, that it’s not going to be safe for me here, that the idea of me having to flee the state is getting more and more real,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out what I have left here, and how do I get out.”
Bray had waited a long time to change her name and gender marker, and now, she said, it felt like a rug was being pulled from underneath her. She first came out publicly in 2019 while attending college in New Orleans. At the time, Texas required people to physically drop off forms at the courthouse, so she figured she would wait until after she graduated and moved back to Austin to face the bureaucracy. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the courthouses, and Bray said the process became confusing and muddled.
But by June of this year, her life was starting to fall into place. She had already been taking hormone replacement therapy for over five years. Her doctor had written her the letter of recommendation needed to demonstrate to a judge that she was trans and wanted to change her gender marker. She got her fingerprints scanned and paid the $350 fee to file.
On Tuesday, with her new court-ordered name and gender marker change in hand, she was ready to begin the process of applying for an updated driver’s license, along with a slew of other changes, including updating bank and insurance information, and her social security card and passport.
When the news of DPS’s policy broke, however, Bray’s dream of having her name and gender marker reflected consistently across her documentation was broken — and raised new questions and fears for her about her future in the state she loved.
“It would be nice for me to have a driver’s license that reflects my name, that would personally feel good,” she said. “But on a practical level, there are times where I get stopped at the airport trying to go through security, or when I’m trying to go to the bar or even at the movies.”
She said people stare at her license and see her deadname and the wrong gender marker, not the person named Emily standing right in front of them who has spent the last five years taking estrogen. She said she would frequently be denied entry from bars or scrutinized by security guards.
Now, she worries about what might happen if she is able to change her name and gender on her other documentation but not her driver’s license.
“What happens if I get pulled over? What happens if I try to vote?”
According to Texas’ Department of Public Safety, people who legally change their names must apply for a replacement Texas driver’s license or ID within 30 days of the name change.
“Will I be breaking the rules by simply not being able to do this thing they don’t want me to do?” Bray wonders. “It’s extremely confusing.”
The new policy could have wide-reaching impacts, and could affect many of the 92,000 trans adults living in Texas, Brad Pritchett, the interim CEO of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas, said in a statement to HuffPost.
“Texans will now be subject to involuntary surveillance for simply trying to update a government document,” Pritchett said in a statement. “There is no clear reason why this information would be useful to the DPS nor is there a legitimate reason to deny gender marker updates on driver’s licenses.”
Ian Pittman, an Austin-based attorney who works with trans Texans, said that the new rule raises new privacy concerns and could put trans people at risk of discrimination and harassment. He told the Texas Tribune that he is advising his clients to hold off on submitting court orders to the state out of fear they could be targeted.
“It will put people on a list that could interfere with their health care,” Pittman said.
The Texas attorney general did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on DPS’s new policy this week.
Other states, like Florida, Montana and Kansas, have enacted similar policies that restrict trans people’s ability to update their driver’s licenses — and some legal experts believe Florida’s actions likely violate federal law.