This New Texas Policy Is A ‘Gut Punch’ To Trans People

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 emailto 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