Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill on Tuesday that would prohibit nonbinary gender markers from being issued on Oklahoma birth certificates, the Associated Press reports. The ban, according to Lambda Legal, is the first of its kind in the nation.
The bill comes a year after the Oklahoma State Department of Health allowed an Oklahoma-born Oregon resident to receive a birth certificate showing a gender marker other than ‘M’ or ‘F’ after suing the state, which initially refused their request. Following the initial case, Stitt issued an executive order prohibiting any changes to a person’s gender on birth certificates.
“People are free to believe whatever they want about their identity, but science has determined people are either biologically male or female at birth,” said the bill’s sponsor, Oklahoma Rep. Sheila Dills — incorrectly, by the way — in a statement after the bill passed the House last week. In fact, in August of last year, the American Medical Association recommended that sex designations be taken off birth certificates all together. “We want clarity and truth on official state documents. Information should be based on established medical fact and not an ever-changing social dialogue.”
Oklahoma’s ban comes as many states are moving toward more inclusive gender options on birth certificates. In 2018, New York state became the first to allow people to include a nonbinary option — an ‘X’ — on its birth certificates, rather than an ‘M’ or an ‘F’. That same year, Colorado became the first state to issue a birth certificate with an intersex designation. Fifteen states and Washington, D.C. now allow a nonbinary gender marker, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality. And, as of July 1, the number will be 16 when a Vermont statute goes into effect.
Oklahoma City Rep. Mauree Turner, the nation’s first openly nonbinary legislator, said it was painful to watch their coworkers pass a law targeting nonbinary people. “I find it very extreme and grotesque use of power in this body to write this law and try to pass it - when literally none of them live like us,” they tweeted.
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Oklahoma’s bill joins the inauspicious ranks of bills in legislatures across the U.S. targeting the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ and nonbinary Americans. Florida infamously passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bars public school teachers from talking about gender or sexuality, as well as bills in several states targeting transgender athletes and doctors who care for transgender patients, as well as transgender patients themselves.
While several bills have passed, some bills have not found success: A Missouri bill that would have stopped incarcerated people and children from changing their gender on official documents, as well as a New Hampshire bill intent on entrenching binary sex, both died in state legislature. And, as a bright spot, some states’ lawmakers have responded by passing legislation that protects trans youth who are fleeing hateful laws in their home states.
