Though I have tried to stay on top of the majority of bills being proposed at the Utah State Legislature this year, I must admit that I do miss some of them due to their title. Today’s post is an example of just that – I read the title for H.B. 225 proposed by Carl Wimmer (R – Herriman, District 52) and skipped right over the bill; I did not even bother to read the bill.

Ah, but this is the exact reason why I have done this series of blog posts. For the most part people simply don’t dig into bills to see exactly what the bill would do to or for the citizens of Utah. I was actually alerted to this one through a Facebook post. For this reason, I would simply like to quote, word for word, the words of Dominique Storni:

To all my Transgender family and transgender allies:

I am saddened by Carl Wimmer’s Drivers License Amendment. Have we not suffered enough? Are we not already sufficiently targeted by fear, fear mongers, hatred, and religiosity?

Notice the Highlighted provisions. This bill will change law to only allow transfolks to change the gender designation on their drivers’ license AFTER surgery. Currently, we can change the gender designation before surgery if we have a legal name change from the courts, present a letter from a psychiatrist or psychologist, and have been on hormonal therapy at least 90 days.

Let me outline why this change will hurt us.

1. Until surgery has been completed, transfolks will be forced to carry an ID or DL that is incongruent with how they present. If I present female, but have a male DL, everyone to whom I am required to show my ID will automatically know that “something is wrong.”

2. Our “Real Life Test” (RLT) requires us to live in the gender we identify as for a year before we can have surgery. The RLT begins not when we begin presenting as the gender with which we identify, it begins once we change our name and our ID to match. This law change makes it more difficult to define when our RLT begins.

3. Since it is already LEGAL to discriminate against transfolks with regards to employment and housing, having a DL that doesn’t match how we present, automatically “outs” us and allows potential employers and landlords that we are transfolks. It will automatically allow discrimination. Because it automatically “outs” us, it also CREATES DISCRIMINATION.

This law is punitive.
This law is unnecessary.
This law widens the interstice between transgender and cisgender people.
This law does nothing to protect anyone.
This law creates automatic discrimination.
This law promotes discrimination.

Please repost this whether you are transgender or a transgender ally. Please contact your representatives and senators on the hill and tell them this is wrong.

If nothing else, this should serve as a case example of just how difficult it is to see the ramifications of any particular bill. After being alerted to this bill, I still read it and did not see the problem until after reading Dominique’s post.