Identity Is More Than Just a Document, But Having the Right Documents Can Be a Matter of Life or Death

The goal? More legislation

non-binary person looking at camera with ID in hand. non-binary

Published: June 22, 2023 | Last Updated: July 12, 2023

Imagine the stress and anxiety of finally deciding to live your life as your true authentic self, working up the courage to tell your family and friends who you really are.

Now imagine you had to take out an advertisement in your local newspaper, using your dead name, to announce to the world your decision.

For trans and non-binary Michiganders, it’s not something they have to imagine. It’s one of the many procedural hurdles they are required to leap over if they want to legally change their name and obtain proper identification documents.

“That was really one of the biggest reasons that I delayed for so long before I started the process of legally changing my name, because that was just so barbaric and honestly scary for me to see that that was part of the process,” said Mikah Rector-Brooks, who recently wrote a column for The Detroit Free Press about their experience. “I wasn't sure if I wanted to change my name and gender markers, even though deep down I knew that I needed to."

Rector-Brooks, 20, is a trans rights advocate from Ann Arbor and tells Pride Source that the legal requirement to publish an ad announcing your decision to change your name is not only degrading, it can place people like themselves in physical jeopardy.

“That’s the case for so many trans people,” they said. “It's just so outwardly unsafe for us to publish that information, especially when the only choice we have is to either legally change our name and gender markers to become our true selves, but that also includes outing ourselves in a paper, or we just stay closeted living with a dead name that doesn't resonate with us anymore.”

“It’s a really tricky decision to make because this step is so dehumanizing, truthfully, to force a trans person to publish their dead name and their new name in a local newspaper. It's so outdated and there's such little reason behind it at this point,” said Rector-Brooks.

But according to Emme Zanotti, Equality Michigan’s director of advocacy and civic engagement, that isn’t even necessarily the most intrusive part of the process.

“As it relates to name changes, certainly there are a number of obstacles right now, the biggest ones being that for those over 21, you have to file fingerprints with the local police department,” she said, adding that one copy gets sent to the Michigan State Police and another sent to the FBI to do criminal background checks.

Zanotti points out that as it relates to the trans community, it is an inherently discriminatory requirement.

“That is not a process that, if someone was getting married, they would have to take to legally change their name,“ she said. “There's also things from a compliance perspective. The Michigan State Police are supposed to destroy those fingerprints if the criminal background check comes back clean. There's just a lot of steps along the way that are outside the autonomy of a human being.”

Zanotti says the publishing requirement only compounds the problem because that ad is also required to list the date and time of the court hearing that would make the name change official.

“If someone were to want to come oppose your legal name change for any reason, they could come do that,” she said. “That's a huge barrier. On top of that, you have to appear in court, so you have to go before a judge in most circumstances. The judge will call you by your dead name, then read the name you're legally changing your name to.”

Zanotti said on a practical level, the costs involved with the process can be a barrier in and of themselves.

“It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money,” she said. “Unscientifically, we’re probably looking at about $500. Some people require legal representation, some don't.”

In fact, the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that the cost of changing IDs was one of the main barriers respondents in Michigan faced, with 42% of those polled saying they had not changed their legal name and 40% of those who had not updated the gender on their IDs reporting that it was because they could not afford it.

That same survey also reported just 9% of respondents said all of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred, while 81% said none of their IDs had the name and gender they preferred.

Further, 33% of respondents who had shown an ID with a name or gender that did not match their gender presentation reported that they were “verbally harassed, denied benefits or service, asked to leave, or assaulted.”

That very circumstance was relayed in 2019 by Jey'nce Poindexter, a case manager at the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, who was then the Transgender Specialist/Victim Advocate for Equality Michigan.

At a press conference announcing a decision by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to revert state policy back to previously existing procedures that made it easier for transgender people to obtain ID, Poindexter gave a real-life example of a transgender woman who experienced discrimination because her gender marker did not match up with her presentation.

“We had a situation where a young lady was downtown. She was outside of a bar. After a bouncer confirmed her biological ID, her card was burned, and they were standing there threatening to beat her and chase her down,” Poindexter said. “So that’s the importance of an ID that aligns with your presentation. It’s a matter of life and death for us.”

Poindexter added that having proper identification reduces the chances for misunderstandings to occur when members of the trans community interact with law enforcement, health care providers and others.

Zanotti said another step forward occurred in 2021 when Attorney General Dana Nessel issued an opinion which declared as unconstitutional a state law requiring "sex-reassignment surgery" to change the sex designation on a birth certificate.

“That opinion laid out that there's no real beneficial interest to the state in making this that hard for the trans and non-binary community,” Zanotti said. “It doesn't advance anything that's imperative to the state's wellbeing or operations or anything like that, and so essentially the Attorney General's not enforcing those requirements on birth certificates at the moment.”

Zanotti said their focus now is to codify the AG's opinion and the Secretary of State's decision in case there were ever someone in their positions who were to view those policies unfavorably.

She indicated that it’s part of a broader effort to legislatively resolve the issues with name changes and identity documents.

“There are not bills introduced, but there is discussion,” she said. “There are champions in the legislature who are ready to help with this and get this going.”

However, Zanotti said that at this point they’re not ready to disclose who those champions are.

“I think work has to be done educating legislators and other kinds of core stakeholders as to why this is such an impactful and critical issue,” she said. “And so that's the work that has to be done over the course of the next couple months.”

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ+ Project, confirmed for Pride Source that those efforts are underway.

“We have worked on proposed legislation that would streamline this process which hopefully will be introduced soon,” he said.

Rector-Brooks concurs that legislation is the goal, and is hopeful that it may even be introduced this session, but cautions against anyone taking a victory lap just yet.

“We've seen that Governor Whitmer has really pushed the message that Michigan has become this safe haven of sorts for the LGBTQ+ community,” they said. “And I applaud that effort, but I do push back on that slightly because the reality is that Michigan is not quite that safe haven, especially for trans people.”

“We're still being policed, we're still being discriminated against in many, many ways, including through the law. So we have many more steps we have to take before we can claim ourselves as this place that is so inclusive for the queer and trans community. But I really applaud the efforts that we have taken, and urge legislators to push even further to make this a truly inclusive state.”