Washington and California seek to grant trans people privacy around their deadnames

As lawmakers in other states increase their surveillance of trans people, legislators in Washington and California have proposed bills that would grant trans people privacy regarding their deadnames.

Washington state and California have put forth bills that would allow trans people’s petitions for name changes to be kept out of the public record, the Associated Press reported. The Washington bill would let people keep such petitions out of the public record for reasons related to gender identity; the California bill would require trans minors’ name changes to be sealed and out of the public record entirely. These kinds of changes not only have historically been public record, but in some states are still required to be announced publicly, in local newspapers.

Washington’s Senate Bill 5028, which passed the Senate in February with bipartisan support, is expected to pass in the House. It’s based on similar rules in New York, New Jersey and Oregon, and would also grant name-change petition privacy to people who have been granted asylum, refugees and emancipated minors. Currently, only people who have experienced domestic violence can keep their petitions for name changes sealed. 

“It’s really hard sometimes for transgender people who have gone through a transition to be in a position where the world can easily find out … their deadname or their former identity,” State Senator Jamie Pedersen, who introduced the bill, told the Washington State Journal in February. “It would be great if Washington had a similar procedure similar to what is available in other states.”

Maia Xiao, a University of Washington grad student, wrote to Pedersen last summer asking him to enact some reforms after watching her trans friend experience unending harassment, including hate mail, since their name change was in the public record.

“It feels very close to me,” Xiao told the Associated Press. “I don’t live a very online life, but it’s really scary to know that something so personal can be so easily accessed by transphobic trolls who want to cause harm.”

Similar threats of harassment fuelled the introduction of California’s Assembly Bill 223, commonly called the Transgender Youth Privacy Act. The bill, which has not been scheduled for a hearing yet, would require states to seal any minor’s petition for name change for reasons of gender identity, along with any documents from the court proceedings.

Introduced by Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Chris Ward, the bill seeks to grant trans youth “the confidence to navigate their gender identity without fear of retaliation from someone who discovers that information in the public record,” Ward said in a statement to the New York Daily News last month. 

“Being ‘outed’ is a traumatic event for anyone—but especially traumatic for someone under the age of 18,” Ward told the outlet. “By sealing the name and gender marker change records, we are bringing the courts in line with the laws around schools not outing students.”

Currently, 23 states allow people to change their names without a public announcement—such as in a local newspaper—while another 18 states allow courts to waive the publication requirement. However, nine states require a name change to be announced, and 25 states restrict name change privacy—and even name changes themselves—for those with criminal records. Washington, for example, can deny an application for a name change from people in prison; sex offenders in California can’t have their names changed unless the courts determine that it won’t harm the public. 

Such restrictions can be a major barrier for trans people seeking to update their government records or ID documents. The 2015 National Transgender Discrimination Survey reported that 68 percent of surveyed trans people didn’t have a single piece of identification that matched their gender identity. This incongruence can have devastating effects for trans people: 32 percent of trans people said that they were verbally harassed, denied service or benefits, asked to leave an establishment or assaulted when they showed an ID that didn’t match their gender presentation. 

The bills in Washington and California, which seek to ease these burdens, contrast sharply with actions in Texas and Florida, where lawmakers have pushed a battery of anti-trans bills and laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year requested that the Department of Public Safety gather a list of people who had changed their gender on their driver’s licences and other records in the past two years, with the government ultimately collecting 16,000 instances of this. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in January asked state universities for the number and ages of students who sought gender-affirming treatments.

In both instances, the reasons for the moves weren’t entirely clear, but advocates said that the data collection could be used to target trans people or, in the case of Florida, reduce funding for trans healthcare at state universities. Ian Pittman, an attorney who represented parents of trans children Texas investigated for child abuse for giving their children gender-affirming care, told the Washington Post that Paxton’s request represented “another brick building toward targeting these individuals.”

“They’ve already targeted children and parents,” Pittman said. The next step would be targeting adults. And what better way than seeing what adults had had their sex changed on their driver’s licences?”

Pedersen told the Associated Press that Republicans’ “disturbing” request for data made the Washington bill seem much more urgent. 

“This seemed to me like a simple action that could go a long way in making transgender people a lot safer in our state,” he said.