A controversy over the use of a trans candidate’s name recently erupted in the Democratic Primary race for the Michigan 2nd State House, picking at a recent growing tension within the Democratic party over fair treatment of trans people more generally.

Joanna Whaley, who is a trans woman, is running against opponent Frank Liberati, whose brother currently holds the seat but is not running again. Earlier this month, Liberati filed a complaint with the Wayne County Clerk over how Whaley’s name, which she legally changed last year, appears on the ballot.

Liberati’s complaint cited a Michigan state law that requires that candidates who go by a different name than the one they were given at birth list their former name on a ballot should they run for office, though there are exceptions for legal and common law name changes.

Whaley’s opponent sought to toss her off the ballot completely because she did not list her birth name, commonly called a “deadname” within the trans community because it was often the name an unaccepting family would bury their trans child with after they had died.

Last week, County Clerk Cathy Garrett rejected Liberati’s complaint because Whaley had both legally changed her name and met the requirements for the common law name change exception, as she had been known socially as Joanna for about five years, well beyond the six months required by law.

Liberati’s challenge to Whaley’s candidacy was clearly an act of transphobia, though he unintentionally boosted her campaign in the process. Whaley reported that the cash on hand in her campaign rose from $9,000 to over $25,000 from new donations in the weeks after the complaint began garnering wider interest in the media and on social media.

“People are done with petty politics,” Whaley told the Michigan Advance, a local outlet that has covered this controversy since the start. “They’re done with it. They want people who can get things done and get things done that they want.”

Some Democratic state leaders roundly denounced the complaint, both for its rank transphobia and the underhanded attempt to use a technicality to win an election. “Attempts to disqualify candidates for using their legal name betrays the foundational principles of the Democratic Party,” Michigan Democratic Party chair Curtis Hertel told the Michigan Advance.

Liberati’s complaint “serves no purpose but to stoke the flames of transphobia for personal political gain,” the Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus said in a statement.

Forcing her to list her deadname on the ballot would have outed her as trans to potential voters and presented confusion for low-information voters. Whaley was already out as trans in her regular life, so this challenge itself didn’t out her. But many voters who might not be paying attention to the minutiae of a local primary campaign for a state house seat may not have known before casting a vote.

Forcing her to list both a male and female name on the ballot is not only confusing, but would make it pretty obvious in the ballot box that she is trans.

In Liberati’s case, it wasn’t really about trying to leverage bigotry against his primary opponent, but rather to disqualify a strong progressive challenger on a legal technicality. But in doing so, he reinforced how the system works against trans people seeking political power.

Whaley’s case shows how the patchwork of name-change laws around the country not only presents hurdles to trans people seeking elected office but in everyday life. The name-change process is usually lengthy, expensive and very public for trans people.

The most common use of name-change laws is when women get married or divorced, and the paperwork for those name changes are typically tied directly into the marriage and divorce legal process. When I got divorced, I inquired whether I could change my name using a designated space given in the divorce-filing paperwork. As I looked over the initial filing paperwork, there was a check box and info line asking whether either person sought a name change as part of the divorce process. My attorney told me, “That isn’t for people like you. That’s for women who are going back to their maiden names.”

Instead, I had to wait until after I socially transitioned to file separate paperwork at the county courthouse, a process that had its own filing fee. Then I had to notify any companies I owed money to and my landlord about my intention to change my name, and they had the chance to comment on it in court if they wished to do so. I was one of the lucky ones though—Maine didn’t require that I publish a notice to change my name in a local newspaper, which would have outed me as trans for the rest of my life.

Each state has different laws around name changes. While name changes due to marriage and divorce have been streamlined in most places, the rest of us—not just trans people but folks who maybe want their nickname to be their legal name, or maybe those who want to sever their naming ties to their parents—have to meet higher levels of legal scrutiny.

Most name-change laws were put in place to begin with to deal with folks who were trying to escape law enforcement or financial debts, hence why I had to notify all of my lenders of my intent to change names. The law presumes folks are changing their names as part of a bigger life deception or potential criminal activity, and therefore forces us to jump through hoops to prove our innocence before doing something that is automatic if you simply get married.

For Whaley, that meant dealing with a shady primary challenger. For others, that might mean a name mismatch in their documents presented to a new employer. Each presents a potential vector for transphobic bigotry and discrimination—with real consequences for people’s livelihoods and safety.

This is why Republicans at all levels of government have made targeting the government IDs of trans people a huge priority in their campaign to run us out of society. When my passport renews next year, I will be forced to have it list me as male. That means I will have to explain to every border agent, both within the U.S. and anywhere else I travel, why there’s a mismatch between my appearance, gender presentation and other ID paperwork.

Someone I know had a mismatch between her appearance, driver’s licence and passport a few years ago. She spent an hour trying to explain to Swedish border agents what was up with the whole situation. It’s a nightmare, and it gets worse when you add in other potential marginalizations like skin colour.

All of these little indignities baked into our identification systems add up, and can lead to potentially humiliating scenarios for trans people, like arguing with foreign border agents, or revealing your personal medical history to hundreds of potential voters. Liberati’s move may have simply been a cold, calculated move to disqualify a pesky electoral opponent, but it just as easily could have been an attempt at publicly humiliating Whaley.

It’s not that being trans is humiliating in itself. But forcing the act of listing Whaley’s deadname is like saying, “Hey, look at this freak, she’s not like the rest of us!”

Whaley was lucky to be living and running in a state where the Democratic party is accepting of trans people. She originally decided to run for this office after Liberati’s brother voted in favour of a trans athlete ban, and is now using the burst of media attention to attempt to make it easier for the next trans candidate.

“My hope for future trans candidates is that we’ve gotten bloody enough to bust the hole in the wall that they can just walk through it,” she told the Michigan Advance in April. “I’m willing to take those punches to make it easier for folks in the future. And so that’s why, for me, it’s important to not just let this go.”

As for Liberati, calls are now growing for him to be expelled from the Democratic party and be stripped of the party designation on his ballot, since his complaint against Whaley could represent a violation of the state party’s code of conduct.

I couldn’t agree more. Trans people have enough to deal with in the name-change process. Trans candidates have to deal with all of that and also work around the potential transphobia of the electorate. Liberati’s attempt to force a trans candidate off the ballot on a transphobic technicality is abhorrent. He’s gotta go.

Voters in Michigan’s 2nd State House District have a chance to do exactly that in August, by pulling the lever for Whaley and making her the first openly trans woman in Michigan state history.