NC agrees to allow 'sex' on birth certificate to be changed | Eastern NC Now

By Peyton Majors
Christian Action League
July 21, 2022

North Carolinians who want to change the sex on their birth certificate can now do so without having surgery under a consent judgment issued by a federal judge.

Under the compromise reached between the state of North Carolina and three transgender individuals, a 1975 law requiring sex-reassignment surgery in order to change one’s sex on a birth certificate will not be enforced.

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 by Lambda Legal, a New York-based LGBT advocacy group. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services opted to settle the lawsuit rather than fight it in court.

U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs, an Obama nominee, signed the consent judgment.

The state must allow individuals to change the sex on their birth certificates “consistent with their gender identity … without requiring the individual to provide proof of ‘sex reassignment surgery,’” Biggs wrote.

Individuals can change their birth certificates by submitting a sworn statement accompanied by one of three forms of ID: a North Carolina driver’s license; a U.S. passport; or a “certification signed by a physician, psychiatrist, physician’s assistant, licensed therapist, counselor, psychologist, case worker, or social worker stating, based on their professional opinion, the gender identity of the registrant.”

“The parties have agreed to a settlement of all matters in controversy before them,” Biggs wrote.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, counsel at Lambda Legal, an American civil rights organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities called it a “victory.”

Although a pro-family decision by Biggs was less than certain, her ruling could have been appealed to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and then — if necessary — to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state, though, chose not to fight.

“It’s no small matter the state wouldn’t fight this” said Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League. “It may seem rather innocuous to some people, but changing a legal document like one’s birth certificate to reflect a lie about one’s identity, that identity being their biological identity, which alone can be substantiated in scientific fact, is an attack on the integrity of our legal system, which requires truth to effectively function.”

Ryan T. Anderson, president of the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, asserted in a 2018 Heritage column that the logic of transgender activists is “inherently confused and filled with internal contradictions.” At the core of the belief system, Anderson wrote, is the false notion that “feelings determine reality.”

“They say that gender is purely a social construct, while asserting that a person can be ‘trapped’ in the wrong gender,” he wrote. “They say there are no meaningful differences between man and woman, yet they rely on rigid sex stereotypes to argue that ‘gender identity’ is real, while human embodiment is not. They claim that truth is whatever a person says it is, yet they believe there’s a real self to be discovered inside that person.

“They promote a radical expressive individualism in which people are free to do whatever they want and define the truth however they wish, yet they try ruthlessly to enforce acceptance of transgender ideology,” Anderson wrote. “It’s hard to see how these contradictory positions can be combined. If you pull too hard on any one thread of transgender ideology, the whole tapestry comes unraveled.”

The transgender worldview, he added, is not the “right side of history.”

“While the claims they make are manifestly false,” he wrote, “it will take real work to prevent the spread of these harmful ideas.”