AB 218 Signed by the Governor! Trans folks can now update their marriage certificates and children’s birth certificates in California!!

By: Amira Hasenbush

TLDR: Trans folks who update their name and gender will now be able to amend their CA marriage certificates and their children’s birth certificates and receive new single-page original certificates, thus protecting their safety and privacy.

A few years ago, I completed a name and gender change for a client.  She received her court order of name change and gender affirmation 8 weeks after we filed her petition with the court, but it took a legal motion, a court hearing and a lot of arguing with the judge to get an order that her marriage certificate be updated.  The law was simply silent on marriage certificates and only addressed changing the petitioner’s birth certificate.   Once I got the order from the court, it took 8 months of arguing with vital records to amend her marriage certificate to reflect that change, and they insisted that the change had to result in a two-page marriage certificate with her name listed as an “AKA” right next to her deadname.  This just wasn’t right.

In the meantime, I had a client who was going through an amicable divorce.  She decided to take back her maiden name, and both she and her husband, a trans man, agreed to hyphenate their children’s last names as a result.  However, when she asked if she could modify her older child’s birth certificate to reflect her husband’s gender – he had transitioned between the birth of their first and second child – we ran into the same issues.  The law was silent, and we would end up having to make a special plea to the court and fight with vital records for the same two-page certificate for their child with an “AKA.”  They chose not to make the change at all, and the father is still listed as the child’s mother on the birth certificate. 

This was silly – clearly an oversight in the law.  So, I reached out to Equality California and asked them if we could make a change.  With Rick Zbur’s nod of approval, Tami Martin and I went to work.  It took nearly three years, a ton of legislative drafting and coordination, and the work of amazing staffers from Equality California, Senator Galgiani’s office, Assembly Member Ward’s office, the Legislative Counsel, the Judicial Council, the County Registrars, the Department Of Public Health, and many others, but yesterday, the bill was passed, and the law will go into effect on January 1, 2023!

So, what does this mean? 

The bill made three major changes:

1. Once the law goes into effect, transgender people will be allowed to request that their marriage certificates that were issued in CA be updated to reflect their name and gender.  They will receive a new certificate that appears just like the original – a one page document – that simply updates their name and whether they were marked as “Bride” or “Groom,” as requested. 

2. Trans folks will also be able to update their children’s birth certificates to reflect their current legal name and to change their label of “Mother,” “Father” or “Parent.”

3. Lastly, since we were already “under the hood,” we fixed another ancillary issue, and now people who don’t currently live in CA will still be able to petition the courts here to change their name and/or gender if they have a birth certificate, marriage certificate or child’s birth certificate issued by the state.  See more on that here.

Want to learn how the process works?  Check out the new law here or feel welcome to reach out and contact me.