Indiana residents will no longer be able to change their gender marker on driver’s licenses or other identification cards after the Bureau of Motor Vehicles enacts a new ban on Feb. 12. The notice was quietly published at the top of instructions for amending identification cards last week.
It states that the bureau “will no longer provide customers with the option to change their gender on their Indiana credential by using a court ordered gender change or physician statement."
The move will end a longstanding legal option for transgender and gender diverse residents to modify their records and will culminate an administrative rule change process the bureau initiated last June.
The rule change process included two rounds of public comments and hearings last year. During the second hearing in November, most if not all of the over 75 speakers opposed the ban. People spoke at length and with emotion about how the changes would harm gender diverse people.
Advocates for the LGBTQ community warned that the ban will forcibly out transgender and nonbinary residents, placing them in danger.
“There are an incredible number of people who are going to be hurt,” said Emma Vosicky, the executive director of GenderNexus, which supports gender diverse youth. “The state can’t even find the integrity to say, ‘Hey, there are people who are going to be hurt.’”
IYG, formerly known as Indiana Youth Group, offers supportive services for LGBTQ youth and others, and opposes the rule.
“The people of Indiana spoke clearly and repeatedly against this policy, and the BMV chose to ignore them,” said IYG CEO Chris Paulsen in a statement. “Quietly implementing a rule that puts transgender Hoosiers at risk—while offering no transparency or meaningful notice—is not governance. It’s cruelty.”
The bureau held that the change is intended to follow state policy.
“The BMV considered all of the public comments submitted on this matter and made the most appropriate decision in order to execute Governor Braun's Executive Order 25-36 properly,” spokesperson Greg Dunn wrote to WFYI. “The BMV follows court orders in cases in which it has been made a party. The court orders described in this rule are court orders in cases in which the BMV has not been made a party.”
Gov. Mike Braun’s executive order directs state agencies to “enforce the biological binary of man and woman.” Vosicky disputes this view and said that it ignores the scientific complexities of sex and gender.
“It’s never been about truth or medical science, it has always been about ideology, and it’s the state’s ideology,” she said. “The state has been pushing a dogma that says there can only be men and women, and that the only way that we can identify them is by reproductive parts.”
Dozens of major medical associations recognize transgender people and support evidence-based gender-affirming care, which is a multi-disciplinary approach to treating a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Some medical groups, like the American Medical Association, have adopted resolutions of support.
IYG said that the change is discriminatory and that mismatched ID cards will expose people to “harassment, threats, and violence” and create “barriers to employment, housing, and access to essential services.”
“It was very disheartening, having been there and heard the testimony against it,” IYG spokesperson Zoe O’Haillin-Berne told WFYI.
People who wrote to the agency were overwhelmingly against the rule, according to public comments from both rounds obtained by WFYI. The records for the first round included 1,674 pages of emails opposing the ban and 19 pages in support. The second included 390 pages of emails in opposition and 11 pages in support.
As a part of the rulemaking process, the bureau responded to public comments and addressed the harms raised by saying it had to follow the governor’s executive order.
Advocates found out that the rule would be implemented over the weekend.
“The thing that people need to know is it’s a very short timeline,” Alan Witchey told WFYI. He’s the CEO of the Damien Center, which is dedicated to ending HIV and AIDS in Indianapolis and provides supportive services for the LGBTQ community and others.
The organization employs physicians who offer health services, such as gender affirming care, which can include physician statements of support for patients seeking to change legal records. Witchey said that people must be patients of the Damien Center and that there isn’t much time for people to take the necessary steps if they want to change their gender marker.
The organization began to raise awareness about the change on social media Sunday.
Dunn said the bureau published a notice about the change on its website on Feb. 3. The BMV learned the rule had been approved by the state attorney general’s and governor’s offices on Jan. 13 and has 30 days to make any changes so that the rule “goes into effect properly.”
Current legislation that would create legal definitions for sex and gender is also under consideration in the statehouse. Senate Bill 182 would also ban amendments to birth certificates, restrict bathrooms in public schools and housing in prisons.
Contact WFYI data journalist Zak Cassel at zcassel@wfyi.org.