Montana Defies Judge’s Order Blocking Anti-Trans Birth Certificate Law

metroweekly.com:

an earlier ruling he made in April that temporarily blocked a 2021 state law, signed into effect by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, prohibiting changes to gender markers on birth certificates unless an individual provides documentation attesting that they have undergone gender confirmation surgery.Under Moses’s April ruling, the state of Montana was supposed to be barred from enforcing the law until the dispute over the law’s constitutionality can be resolved in by the courts.

That means that, for the time being, the state was supposed to revert back to a 2017 rule, adopted under former Democratic Gov.

Steve Bullock, that allowed transgender people to change their gender marker by submitting an affidavit attesting that they had undergone a gender transition.But following Moses’s ruling, the Montana Department of Health enacted a new temporary rule that is would no longer record “gender” on people’s birth certificates, instead replacing that category with a listing for “sex” — referring to a person’s assigned sex at birth — which can only be changed in rare circumstances, such as clerical error.The rule — which goes even further than the law being challenged — states that sex, unlike gender, is “immutable,” and cannot be changed, even by gender confirmation surgery.

That rule, which was made permanent last week,  signifies that the Gianforte administration has doubled down on its opposition to legally recognizing transgender individuals’ gender identities.Currently, three other states — Tennessee, Oklahoma, and West Virginia — have imposed prohibitions on gender marker changes as rigid as Montanas, although some Republican-led legislatures have proposed similar restrictions.