Colorado Law Lets Transgenders Get New Birth Certificates Without Proof Of Surgery

The new law called "Jude's Law" is named after a transgender 13-year-old who was the first to get a "new" birth certificate under the gender they were not born as.

The Denver Post has more details on the new Colorado law:

ude spent so many years fighting for the bill to allow transgender Coloradans to more easily change their names and gender designations on identity documents that, eventually, they named the thing after her.

That bill became a law in 2019 — “Jude’s Law” — and went into effect Wednesday.

And early Thursday morning, Jude, 13, rode with her mom and sister from Boulder County to the state health department building in Denver, where Jude became the first person in Colorado to benefit from the law that bears her name.

“Boom,” she said as she ripped her old birth certificate in half, before ripping it a few more times for good measure.

“I was living under a name that didn’t match who I was,” said Jude, whose family asked The Denver Post to publish only her first name because of safety concerns. “I wasn’t living as my true self, which caused a lot of self-hate. By changing this, it pretty much cuts off all association with that.”

Thanks to Jude’s Law, she has a new birth certificate and a sense of completeness.

The law brought several key changes. It let people obtain brand new birth certificates rather than amended ones. It undid the requirement that transgender Coloradans prove that they underwent reassignment surgery before being allowed to change their gender designation on identity documents. And it removed the long-standing requirement for public notice — in a newspaper, typically — of name changes.

These various changes, said Jude’s sister Madison, are immeasurably valuable to those who need them.

“This is a step toward her just being able to completely be who she is,” Madison, 19, said while beaming in her sister’s direction. “That’s beautiful. That’s all anybody really wants — to live exactly as we are, to be accepted and loved through all of it.”

Breitbart also said:

Colorado residents who claim to be transgender or “non-binary” can now obtain a “new” birth certificate with a name and gender change, without any proof of sex-change surgery, according to a new state law.

As of January 1, “Jude’s Law” (HB19-1039) went into effect, named after 13-year-old “Jude,” a biological male, who told Fox 31 Denver he went to the vital records office on January 2 to “get my gender and name changed on my birth certificate.”

“I think a lot of us have lived as someone that we’re not,” Jude said. “And we’ve been identifying by something that wasn’t who we are. And for me, that brought a really dark place—a lot of self-hate.”

“I got my old birth certificate and I ripped it,” Jude added. “It was kind of a nice little closure to say, ‘I’m done with you. It’s over.’”

According to Fox 31, LGBTQ lobbying group One Colorado co-wrote Jude’s Law and Democrat Gov. Jared Polis signed it into law.

Thank you @nrnriggio for capturing this day! #judeslaw #hb1039 #coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/kEd3cDmrxX

— One Colorado (@One_Colorado) January 3, 2020

“A transgender or non-binary person can access any state identity document—a birth certificate, a driver’s license, a state ID without a cumbersome process, like needing a surgery, a court order, or a doctor’s note,” said Daniel Ramos, executive director of One Colorado.