A federal appeals court upholds Tennessee’s policy barring transgender individuals from amending their birth certificates to reflect gender identity, rejecting constitutional challenge.
Quick Read Points:
- A federal appeals court upheld Tennessee’s policy against amending birth certificates to reflect gender identity.
- The ruling rejected a constitutional challenge by four transgender women.
- Tennessee is one of a few states with such a categorical ban.
- The court’s decision contrasted with a recent ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
- The plaintiffs’ lawyer indicated potential further legal action following the decision.
Bollywood Fever: A divided federal appeals court on Friday upheld Tennessee’s longstanding policy prohibiting individuals born in the state from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity. The 2-1 decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the U.S. Constitution does not require the Republican-led state to change the biological sex listed on the birth certificates of four transgender women born in Tennessee.

Tennessee remains one of the few states that categorically bars changes to the sex designation on birth certificates. The transgender plaintiffs argued that this policy violated their due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment, as it discriminates based on sex and transgender status.
However, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for the majority, agreed with the lower court’s decision to reject the lawsuit. “The States have considerable discretion in defining the terms used in their own laws and in deciding what records to keep,” Sutton wrote. “Tennessee did not exceed that discretion in distinguishing biological sex from gender identity in its birth certificate records.”
Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti, praised the ruling, emphasizing that any change to the state’s policy must come from the people of Tennessee. “This decision respects the state’s discretion in maintaining its records,” he said.
Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs from the LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal, expressed disappointment with the ruling and indicated that they were considering their next steps. “Nobody is harmed by our plaintiffs having birth certificates reflecting who they are,” he stated.
Gonzalez-Pagan also noted that the ruling conflicts with a recent decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which revived a lawsuit challenging a similar policy in Oklahoma that prevents transgender individuals from changing their birth certificates to match their gender identity.
The majority judges in the 6th Circuit ruling were appointed by Republican presidents, while the dissenting judge, Helene White, was initially nominated by Democratic former President Bill Clinton and later appointed by his Republican successor, George W. Bush. Judge White argued that the policy is based on outdated generalizations about gender and infringes on the plaintiffs’ rights by “forcibly outing them in the myriad circumstances when birth certificates are necessary to participate fully in contemporary society.”
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