 To the help. I'm an accidental government information librarian webinar series or help for short. This series is brought to you by the American Library Association's government documents roundtable and thank you all so much for coming. You will all be muted during our webinar but we encourage you to participate in chat and in the q amp a and if you don't see either of those icons on your screen, you can check right along the bottom of your screen and you'll find those icons there. We encourage you to add questions via the q amp a throughout today's sessions, and we'll be holding questions until the end. And, but that's that we encourage you to submit them as you think of them. If you have any technical issues throughout today's webinar, Kelly Wilson is on hand to help you can feel free to chat directly with her, but worst case scenario do remember that this webinar is being recorded as we were just reminded as the recording started. Be sure to stay tuned for our spring slate of webinars in March will be co hosting a session on elections data with the politics policy and international relations section dates forthcoming. And if you have any topics you would like to present please let me know. There will also be a short survey at the end of today's webinar where you can share your thoughts and feedback and even ideas for future webinars. You can see more of our past webinars on our YouTube channel please give us a follow if you are a YouTube user and don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bells that you know when new webinars are up. Let's move on to talking about today's webinar. Today's webinar is states of LGBTQ equality examining the patchwork of policies and how librarians can support LGBTQ community members and our speaker days Logan Casey based in St. Louis Logan is the senior policy researcher and advisor at the movement advancement project. He creates accessible and persuasive policy research and resources manages all policy related data including the LGBTQ equality maps tracking and local progress and leads maps movement capacity research prior to joining map Logan was a research associate for the Harvard opinion research project where he was deputy researcher on a polling series but discrimination in America among other projects. He was a PhD in political science from in 2016 from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where his research focused on the influence of emotions in public opinion toward LGBTQ people and issues, I'm going to go ahead and stop my screen share here and let Logan take it away. Thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you Larry and thank you everyone for being here. I am delighted to get to talk to y'all. These are some of my favorite people. So I'm especially excited to be here. And thank you for the opportunity. So as Larry already mentioned, this is the title of the presentation today states that LGBTQ equality. We'll talk about Patrick policies and how y'all can support LGBTQ community members. And as again was already mentioned my name is Logan I use he him pronouns and I am map senior policy researcher and advisor. My email is on the screen. It's Logan at LGBT map.org here to be a resource if I can. I'm going to get this and now realizing I need to get a new picture that was a post COVID to be young again. So anyway here about map, we are an independent nonprofit think tank, we've been around since 2006. And our mission is to speed equality for all people including LGBTQ people, and we do that through a few ways. We're advancing the conversation through messaging research communication tools technical assistance we work a lot with media and many other organizations to really change the way that we talk about LGBTQ people and issues and I'm going to mention some of these resources and you know this about map because there are a lot of different things that I think could be of interest or help to y'all in the work that you do not just about identity documents but just in general anything about LGBTQ folks we probably have something for you. So here's advancing the conversation and messaging and media work. We also work in policy that's my job advancing policy by creating resources that are easily understandable persuasive actionable. We talk a lot about these resources today. We also emphasize and care a great deal about advancing collaboration, both within the LGBTQ movement and across many movements and types of work. We work to build coalitions and partnerships including through events just like this one to help empower and support other organizations doing the work that they're doing, and to help bring a build a broad base of support for LGBTQ people and issues. I think we about policy work again will will go into several examples of the kind of work we do today but I just want to mention that we have a wealth of resources. However, you might be looking for them with its population based resources you're looking for information about specific groups within the LGBTQ community, or specific issues that affect the LGBTQ community we have tons of resources. All of this is to say, you know me if I can be a resource, and really looking forward to talking to you today. So, here's what we're actually going to be talking about today. First we'll start with the current policy landscape, and this will be just a very brief or very broad overview of major issues facing LGBTQ people today including some that directly impact libraries and schools. And then we'll talk about a brief overview of maps of quality maps and our related resources because this will be a major hopefully a majorly helpful tool for the work that you all are doing. And it will also help me talk to you about identity document laws and policies which is one of the main focuses of today. And then throughout the presentation we'll talk about how librarians can support LGBTQ community members. So we'll start with the current policy landscape. The first thing I want to say is that, of course there's been a great deal of progress for LGBTQ folks, and our experiences over recent years and decades. But progress is not linear. And we are currently in a very clear period of efforts to undermine LGBTQ equality and roll back the progress that has been made to date. So you may have seen recent headlines like these on the screen more anti LGBTQ laws passed in the last year than any year in history, a state of crisis and unprecedented wave. And we expect these trends to continue. And I want to say that these headlines aren't just hyperbole, they are in fact factual. We do research from our friends at the Equality Federation, who I'll talk about later they're a wonderful organization in the human rights campaign. And every year they do an analysis of bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country that affect LGBTQ people. And the red dotted line that you see on the screen is the number of bad or anti LGBTQ bills that have been introduced in state legislatures every year since 2010. And you can see all the way to the right that that red dotted line is the highest it's ever been. So last year was a record high number of anti LGBTQ bills that were introduced in state legislatures with nearly 270 bills introduced. And you see right below that it was also a record high number of bad bills that actually became law. So, you know, we often hear stories that, you know, things are on the up and up public opinion is more supportive than ever marriage was legalized like things are doing really well. And again, of course, there's been a great deal of progress made. But, you know, the facts of the matter are that we're also seeing a great deal of resistance and pushback and backlash and very coordinated efforts to undermine the progress that has been made so far. And to halt any further progress, not just for LGBTQ people but for people of color and racial equity matters of racial equity and a lot more. We're in this moment of progress being under attack. And I also want to note here that it's not just that bad bills are being introduced and passed at higher rates, but also this purple line shows the number of good bills that have been introduced over the last 11 or so years. And this shows that actually last year was the second lowest number of good bills that have been introduced over this timeframe and good bills here I mean things that would protect or affirm LGBTQ people's rights things like inclusive non discrimination protections or like what we'll talk about today. So those are the bills that could improve the process for changing your name or your gender marker on identity documents and lots of other kinds of issues. So, both the mark remarkable increase in hostile discriminatory legislation and a noticeable decrease in good affirmative protective legislation. So let's talk about what specifically, what specifically the kinds of bills are that we're seeing lately. One of the major issues, if not the biggest issue right now in the LGBTQ space and possibly even more broadly is is not coded. It's not many of the other pressing matters we're facing as a country but rather talking about what teachers can and can't talk about in the classroom, and what's going on in school so you've probably heard a great deal about bills that would propose to ban or censor discussions of race in the classroom critical race theory. Those often also talk about sex and other matters of power and identity. So those bills have been rapidly spreading across the country in the last year or two, and many bills in the in state legislatures are also targeting LGBTQ issues explicitly, everything what rules you can and can't put on teachers and staff with respect to respecting students pronouns, what textbooks you can and can't use, how transgender kids can move through their life at school whether that's in sports or the bathrooms or many other things. So lots and lots of focus on LGBTQ people and race in schools in particular. And I want to emphasize that a lot of this is playing out over questions of books and curricular materials, instructional materials, and I'm sure to folks on this call. That's no surprise that's a big pattern of history that we're seeing repeat, but a big focus in state legislatures, especially this year on school books. The headline in the middle here is a. So this isn't even a state legislative level but also the local level, a mayor in Mississippi withholding taxpayer money from a public library, not just a school library but a public library over their LGBTQ related books on the shelves. And here in my home state of Missouri a bill was introduced last year and we expect similar ones this year that would create a parental advisory board over public libraries, and that board could basically remove any material that it deems being quote sexually inappropriate or explicit with no oversight whatsoever, even creating a provision that librarians could be jailed if they fail to comply with the decisions of the public library of the parental overview board. So luckily that building past last year but these are the types of things that are being debated, and they're all very much centered around questions of race and LGBTQ identity. So this is a major area for the policy landscape right now. And I'm going to give you an example of one of our quality maps that tracks different kinds of laws and policies around the country and focus just on these school laws to give you an example of laws that are already on the books. And then I'll show you states that are actively considering more laws like this in the legislature. So this is an equality map that we have on LGBTQ curricular laws as you can see across the top. And what you see here is actually three different policies all within the sort of curricular bucket. And the dark green states there are seven of them right now that have passed state laws that explicitly require that the states curricular standards. So not the lesson plans themselves but the standards that learning outcomes must reach in the state. And those curricular standards must be LGBTQ inclusive, as is appropriate to the subject material, like whether it's in history or science making sure that it's relevant to that subject, and also appropriate to the age level. And so these are states that have taken good and proactive measures to make sure that the curriculum and the learning materials that students are engaging with is representative of the whole country and the diversity of human experience but is also historically accurate and reflects LGBTQ folks alongside other communities. And I want to note also importantly that these inclusive curricular standard laws tend to include requirements that curricula must also be inclusive of other communities like people with disabilities or communities of color. So these are great bills that are good and doing good work here. And in this same area of law we have these two other, at least two other policies this map is just showing these for now but there are other curricular related policies. The lighter orange ones are states that are saying. So this is Arizona Montana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida states that are saying, if you're going to talk about LGBTQ people or issues in the classroom, you're required to notify parents about that ahead of time. They're not allowed to remove their children from those classrooms. So that that obviously so we call those parental opt out bills for short. But that obviously has the effect of putting additional many effects, including putting additional burdens on teachers to be able to, you know, have the time when they're already under resourced and under staff to send out those sort of notifications ahead of time. And then if students are opting out of that if the parents are opting their students out of class, the obligation and additional burdens of creating an alternative resources alternative lesson plans and that sort of thing. But it also creates this broader environmental effect of saying, you know, these are taboo subjects maybe we won't talk about them maybe we will. There are impacts that that has on the school climate in terms of normalizing or stigmatizing certain topics like LGBTQ people in our experiences. And these also have, they have a broader chilling effect of knowing that those are the sorts of things that can play out, including the fact that some of these laws allow for parents to sue schools, or teachers, if those provisions aren't going to end up having a chilling effect on many teachers lesson plans where they just won't talk about the issues at all to avoid even the threat of potential mishaps so those parental opt out laws are already on the books in five states and then the darker orange for states Texas Oklahoma Louisiana and Mississippi are all states that extend that a step further and say actually you know what you just can't talk about LGBTQ issues at all, not even a question of parental justification but you just can't talk about them at all. So those sort of like censorship fans. So here is one example of one of our quality maps but also laws that are already on the books related to this super salient political issue today. The last map now is states that are actively considering at this moment bills similar to the ones I just showed you the bad ones anyway the opt out bills, the explicit censorship bills about LGBTQ people and issues, but also bills that would focus more narrowly, and still problematically on books textbooks school libraries public libraries, as well as the bands that we talked about with prohibiting discussions about race and sex and power, and other questions of identity in the classroom. And I want to emphasize that this map I just just pulled this together today. So this is only the bills that I'm aware of so I might actually be missing some and some state legislative sessions haven't even started yet. So we certainly expect more states to show up on this map. So you can see just from here how many different states are currently considering these bills and that doesn't even show you states that considered them last year. So, so really salient issue unfortunately. So let's take a minute and zoom out from that so if what we just talked about is the current moment of progress being under attack this really salient issue or set of issues around schools and classrooms. I want to talk about how this legislative environment or this current moment isn't happening in isolation. This pre existing policy landscape for LGBTQ issues that can help us better understand what's happening, both in those legislatures and for LGBT people's daily lives, whether we're thinking about politicians or not. And that broader context is this patchwork of protections that I mentioned in the title and and have talked about once or twice already. And so what I mean there is that, you know, there are many many issues affecting LGBTQ people's lives not just the school issues, although that's obviously big and important. But there are many many issues that affect LGBTQ people's lives and this list on the screen is just some of them. These are most of the issues that we currently track at map on our quality maps. And so just, you don't need to read this but I'm just trying to give you the visual impression of like there are many many issues that continue to affect our lives. And thinking about these individually or trying to add them all up and get a big picture can be can get overwhelming pretty quickly. So what we do at map is we go through every single one of these policy issues, see how states are treating that policy differently, and give every state a score for each one of these issues. And then from there we're able to look at a state and add up their score for all the different policies and create a sort of summary map. So the map I just showed you was a couple different policy areas. We then add those scores up across all of the 50 plus laws and policies we track, and we're able to create this birds eye view of what is the legislative environment or the policy landscape for LGBTQ issues at the state level. Across all 50 plus of those policies so that's what you're looking at here. So what you see is there are nine states currently those are the red states that have a negative overall score. So those are states that are, they're not only doing poorly they're they actually have a literal negative score on our on our policy tally scoring system. But it's generally because states like these have not only a lack of positive protections like non discrimination law, but they have actively discriminatory and harmful laws like HIV criminalization laws, or laws like we'll talk about today that make it really difficult if not impossible for people to update the name or gender marker on their ID documents. So moving up from their states like my home state of Missouri are in the orange or low overall policy tally so they're they're not negative but they're still not doing great either, and then as you can imagine moving up into fair medium and high. So you what you see here is that there's a lot of variation across states, and even across regions are within regions so you know the south, a lot more red and orange than in the northeast or the west. And within a region like the Midwest a lot of variation ranging from South Dakota as a negative state, all the way through Minnesota and Illinois at these more high quality states. So a lot of variation here and I'll talk for a minute about why that variation matters. But I want to also pause and say, you know, LGBTQ policy, quote unquote, isn't just that, you know, one big category, talking about lots of different types of policies and lots of different people within the LGBTQ community. So one of the things that we're also able to do with our quality maps is to break out the sexual orientation aspects of these laws from the gender identity aspects of these laws. And that can help give us a better understanding of how LGBTQ policy is playing out in different ways. So if we look just at the sexual orientation aspects of law. This map actually looks a little bit better than what we were just looking at see there's fewer negative or red states, more of those states in the middle those like cream colored states and more the green states so sexual orientation law in general doing a little bit but there's still as you can see quite a lot of variation from one state to the next. But on the flip side for gender identity, a much starker picture. So you can see lots more states in the red not doing well on gender identity law. And there are a number of reasons for this so we could talk about in Q&A but one of the short answers is that, if nothing else, both politicians and the public have been thinking about sexual orientation issues. And, you know, those attitudes have changed a lot more quickly than attitudes have regarding gender identity and transgender people. And we're also seeing that play out, not just with respect to how much changes happen so far in public attitudes, but also what state legislatures are actively legislating about right now, many of the policies being proposed in state legislatures are explicitly targeting transgender people, and in a way that would actually worsen their score on this path. So a focus here on trans people in particular right now. But I mentioned a second ago that it's, there's this policy variation matters, right, and it's not just a question of isn't this a pretty map or isn't that interesting. Look what we can do with with Adobe like there's there's actual reasons that this policy variation matters. There's a great deal of research that shows that state policy variation has a big impact on any number of things both for individuals, and for the state itself so some of that research shows things like economic security that LGBTQ people living in states with higher scores or better LGBTQ related laws and policies in general, those folks are doing better economically. And furthermore that the state is doing better economically that having good and inclusive laws is good for the economy. We similarly see research that shows. Sorry, my screen is dragging a little bit. I have a lot of research that shows that LGBTQ related laws and policies are strongly correlated to mental and physical health outcomes for both adults and children. And I want to pause and say for a second, I don't think that these arguments are big structures right like if you pass a law about health care, making health care more affordable, easier to access. We should expect hopefully that down the road, people in that state, their health outcomes will be better right so this is all we're arguing here is that policy matters for people's lives and research shows that it does. And that's true, even when it's a policy that you might not think is directly related so laws like identity document laws and policies, which we might not think of as a health issue, even though it is. When those laws are better health outcomes are better for trans people in those states so there's a ton of research about this and I'm happy to share more. But just for the sake of time, keep moving and similar impacts in the research from the research show that state policy variation also matters for kids, academic achievement and their health as well and a whole lot more. So this policy variation is important for all of these reasons, as well as the fact that it's just difficult to navigate right so if you're a person like me, so I'm transgender. I was living in Ohio until a couple months ago, and I just moved back home to Missouri. You know, I even as the policy researcher on this on this issue on these questions. It's still hard to know okay what are the rules about or what protections do I have in this state versus this state or if I'm going on a road trip from here to there. What things do I need to think about and make sure that I'm prepared for just in case something happens. So this variation is has all these relevant impacts on people's lived material lives and experiences. It's just something that's difficult to navigate by itself and I think this is one of the many places that librarians can be super supportive and help folks navigate this variation. So with that said let's talk about our quality maps and the resources I think that'll help me out well I'll be drawing a lot on these resources to talk about identity document laws and policies. I'll give you a quick run through of what they are and how to use them. And then we'll talk about identity documents in detail. So, first I think I've mentioned this already. Our quality maps are currently tracking over 50 LGBTQ related laws and policies at the state and a few at the local level. Excuse me. And these maps, we update them in real time so as soon as we hear about a change or a law that's passed. And we can verify that I update the maps right away so not only are they comprehensive tracking 50 plus policies but they're also as up to date as possible. And we also provide citations and more information for every single one of the maps. We try to be very rigorous in the research but also extremely transparent in the work that we're doing one so that folks don't have to reinvent the wheel. And two so that if you're coming to our maps to try to figure out, what do I have to do in this state or what are my rights and protections in this state. There's more information available to you to get what you need if we don't have the level of detail that you're looking for. The link on the page is so we have a medium blog where we talk about the work we do but one of those blog posts is tips and tricks for how to navigate our quality maps and I think that could be helpful. So this is a direct link to that blog post but we'll talk about some of this right now. We also from these maps were able to compile a state profile for every state so we have. If the first bullet is maps like one the already saw on LGBTQ curricular laws, you have a map for each one of those policies, we also have a profile for each and every state that summarizes how that state is doing on all of the policies that we're scoring. And I do want to mention, we just recently expanded our offerings into a new set of what we're calling democracy maps and this might be of interest for your event next month about election data. But we so if the quality maps are 50 plus LGBTQ related laws, the democracy maps are almost similar number of maps about election and voting related laws and policies so I won't talk about that today but we do have that resource as well. So to get to our quality maps, you start by going to our website LGBT map org, and at the top, you see these different buttons. There's democracy maps right there and then a quality maps right here. So if you click on that, it'll take you to this landing page. This map is the one that I just showed you of the big picture state policy variation across all the policies we track. There's tabs right here. I'm not sure if you can see my cursor, but the tabs right here sexual orientation and gender identity. Those are those two follow up maps that I showed you splitting out the sexual orientation and gender identity policies separately. You can also get directly to this page by just typing in LGBT map org slash equality dash maps. On this page you can either hover over the equality maps button again at the top or click on either these choose a state or choose an issue buttons that are in a red circle here. And that'll give you direct access to these lists of all the different policies we track and the screen grab doesn't even get the whole list but just so that you could see some of it without it being too small. So choose an issue it'll give you this list of all of the different maps that we have available. And they're sorted here the default is sorting by category so relationship issues print recognition and discrimination law. LGBTQ youth healthcare criminal justice and what you don't see on here is also religious exemptions and identity document laws. You can also sort these alphabetically. And that'll get you to that list we saw earlier. And then if you click on any one of those entries, it'll take you directly to the map for that policy area so that here's the one that we saw earlier about curricular laws. And I want to emphasize what I said a few minutes ago about citations and more information available. If we actually were to go to the website for this map, or the URL for this map there would be a bunch of explanatory text above the map and more information below the map. And then showing you the map itself for the sake of not throwing a wall of text at you but there's more information on each maps page. And importantly, this read the state by state statutes button will give you a PDF link of basically all the information that's on the map itself but with additional info and links to the legislation or the the statute or the administrative law or whatever it might be. And note that for some of our maps that statutes button is below the legend for others like this one, you can see it's here below the map or lower left corner of the map. I'm sorry that those are inconsistent we're working on streamlining those right now but I did just want to point out that sometimes they're in different places. But there is one for every single map that we have. And it'll give you a PDF that looks like this and this particular example is a fairly recent area of loss there's not a lot of information for me to report here but in other areas of law where there's a lot more going on or there might be, you know, executive orders and a legislative piece of legislation and some administrative code or regulatory something. I try to put as much information as I can in here so that you can get all the information you might need. Okay, so those are the citation sheets. And as I mentioned we also have the state profile so if you are on any one of our maps and you just click directly on the state. It'll take you to that states profile. So here's Wisconsin state profile for example, we start off with demographic quick facts about the LGBTQ population in the state, each one of those quick facts is also cited that's the language below like Williams 2020. And if this weren't just a picture, you would see that this is, those are hyperlinked as well and we'll take you directly to the source of that data. And then it goes on the state profile goes on to the sort of summary statistics of how that state is doing on our scoring system, both overall and then broken out by sexual orientation and gender identity scores. And as you scroll down through the state profile, you'll see a detailed table, breaking out that state score for each and every one of the policies that we score. So here's an example of the relationship laws. And these state profiles again are interactive. So if you were to click on any one of these rows, it would take you directly to that map, so that you could oh what a second what does that mean second parent adoption. And you could click on it, and it would take you directly to that map, and then you could click on the state again to come right back to where you were. So they're meant to be really interactive and hopefully helpful and easy to use. If you ever have an issue with the website or something's not working or it's not clear. You can just send me an email and I will, you know, either get you the information you need or fix the issue. And that's how we've improved our website a lot over the years is by people just telling us like I don't. I don't want to make this functionality work better. That's not working or that's not clear so we very much welcome feedback and requests like that. Oh, and if you keep scrolling down the state profiles, you'll start to see some of our local level tracking as well so we track non discrimination ordinances and conversion therapy bands at the local level to. So at the bottom of the state profile once you get past all the state level laws you'll see the local level tracking. And this is a Wisconsin's an interesting example because they have sexual orientation non discrimination law at the state level, but not gender identity law at the state level. So we are tracking local level non discrimination ordinances that include gender identity protections. So you can, you know, we have these for every state that does not have state level protections because if they have state level it looks like this one on the left, where the whole state's covered. So you can see there where in the state there are inclusive protections for gender identity or whatever is needed. And if you keep scrolling past the map you also get this handy table of what those different localities are that have those provisions, and what is included in each ones because sometimes they're really different from one another. So we can get pretty detailed, we intend this to be as accurate as possible so again if there's ever errors or something you see like maybe you're in Wisconsin right now and you know that I'm missing something. I want to know. So please, please let me know. Okay so that's that's a brief 101 on the equality maps. Again, here's how you can get there. Any URL is for the tips and tricks. And again my email is Logan at LGBT map or if I can help with anything or if you see any problems. So that's a quick overview on how to use them. And so now we're going to use them to talk about and navigate identity document laws and policies specifically. So the first thing I want to say about identity document laws is that while we're going to talk about these in the context of transgender people in particular identity docs are about everybody. They are a key part of identity of everyday life rather so and by identity documents I mean things like a driver's license or a birth certificate, sort of state or government issued ID cards. Sorry my cat wants to join the conversation. So these, these identity docs are a key part of everyday life. And I, they've become so commonplace in our life that I think many of us don't even notice how important they are until maybe you lose your ID or there's a big obstacle to you getting one or updating it. Identity documents are our vital keys that are necessary to open the doors to everything from, you know, driving a car to getting a library card, or opening a bank account or applying for an apartment. But sorry, Mike, I'm going to just escort my cat out of the room. Sorry. Zoom era life. Sorry, thanks for understanding. I'll just say this is an audience where cats are definitely welcome on zoom. I wouldn't normally wouldn't mind her staying but I have a feeling she did. Hey, excuse you. She would advance the slides before I'm ready to talk about them. Is this just how this is going to be. Okay. All right, well anyway, identity documents are important. And despite how important they are not everybody has one, or even if they have one it might not be accurate or up to date. Research shows that an estimated more than one in 10 adults in the country so that's more than 26 million people lack any form of government issued photo ID. With respect to documents being out of date, even if you have one, you know, there are a lot of different reasons that an identity document might be out of date or inaccurate. We're obviously going to talk today about why that's relevant for trans people, but it's not just about trans people right like you, there are many, many reasons you might need to update your ID, like if you move like I think I mentioned already I just moved recently. The Census Bureau estimates that the average American moves 12 times or so in their lifetime. And that's a, excuse you. Okay, sorry. And that's a, you know, every time you move that's an address change that's a kind of update you might need to make. And when it comes to changing your name that's another reason you might need to update your ID. But nearly 30% of all us adults, including over half of the internet. This isn't just a question about trans people. It's a question about everyone, especially given how important identity documents are to being able to access all these different parts of our life. And not being able to have that ID whether having one in the first place or getting accurate or updated one can cause many harms for all of those different things that we just talked about, you know, being able to access a library, or public transportation or opening a bank account or getting an apartment or applying for a job, let alone things like voting. So, the really, really important and again not just about trans folks though that's what we're going to be focusing on today. And in particular, we're going to talk today about identity document processes in these three different aspects so legally changing your name, updating the gender marker on your driver's license and updating the gender marker on versatility. So that's what we'll talk about today. So first, talking about name changes, you know, many transgender people, myself included, change, change your legal name to better reflect their gender identity. And state laws generally generally allow people to do this, as long as it's for a non criminal purpose like, say you're trying to avoid credit card debt, or maybe you owe money on child support or something like that. That's not supposed to. So if it's for a quote unquote criminal reason, you should be allowed to change your name in theory, but many states still have outdated and burdensome requirements that create really substantial barriers to folks trying to get a legal name change. So just very broadly speaking, some of the here are some of the steps in the process of legally changing your name. In order to legally change your name, what you need is a court order saying, yes, you are allowed to do this and I the judge order that it be done. And in order to get that court order, it generally starts with filing a petition or some kind of paperwork with your local court where that's going to happen. Where that where you're seeking that court order. And that's usually, you know, where you live filing that petition usually costs money and usually not a trivial amount of money. And all of this is again assuming you're allowed and not just because of the quote unquote non criminal purpose for changing the name, but also because many states have restrictions on people who have a criminal record that either prevents them from changing their name at all or adds a lot of additional hoops and obstacles before they are allowed to change their name. And that's problematic for a number of reasons, including when we think about the disproportionate harms of the criminal justice system on communities of color and LGBTQ people. So I can talk more about that in detail but just note that, you know, this, this also assumes that you're even allowed to change your name in the first place. Once you file that petition, you also generally need, you need to set a date for the court hearing assuming that they're going to have a court hearing in person. Or even on zoom. Then there's a potential requirement to publish the notice of the hearing so this is one of the most common and problematic requirements other than the criminal restrictions, one of the most problematic requirements. The legal name change is the requirement that you have to publicly post or publish notice of your legal name change efforts in say like a local newspaper. And again the idea is to this so this this provision these requirements generally weren't created with transgender people in mind, rather they. The intention, in theory at least was to try to make it harder for people to change their name if they were doing it for that criminal purpose so again let's say that you owe someone money, or the government money by requiring this publication of the effort to change it's giving people who might that you might owe money to or whatever the case might be a chance to hear that you're doing this and then to possibly like raise an objection or something like that. So, it's not necessarily created with trans people in mind but as you might imagine, it creates a lot of problems especially for trans people. So, you know, for example my name change when I did this in Michigan was required to publish in the local newspaper, I want to say it was for at least two or three weeks in a row. And it makes you include you know here's my current legal name, here's what I want to change it to. Here's the date that I'm having the court hearing. That's like a big add in the newspaper that you have to run, and that costs money itself so the money is a problem publishing it being required to publish it is a problem because it can create this public record of your legal name change and that can be an issue, both for you know in the in the immediate time when you're when it's running in the paper that that can out you to folks in the community, especially if you're maybe in a rural area where there's fewer folks that might be more likely that that newspaper I get seen. And we can talk about rural communities and the specific impacts of things like this in Q&A if you're interested in that's a really important area of research to me. But anyway, so it can out folks, it can also you know, even if it's not at the time when the newspaper ad is running, let's say a year from then you're applying for a job they do a search on you, and it comes up the newspaper ad comes up in in that search that can out you to an employer. So these requirements can be really problematic not just because of the cost of paying to run that posting in a newspaper, but also because of the potential exposure to violence or harassment or discrimination. Okay, so then once the notice has been published if it's required then you have to actually go in person, or to this you have to attend the hearing maybe might be on zoom now but that can be you know something you might have to take time off work to do, which could be another case of lost money or wages. And then hoping hope that the judge actually grants your request which isn't always guaranteed sometimes judges can say no I don't think you should do this because I don't think people should change their genders. There are many documented cases of that happening. But assuming that your name change request is granted. Then at that time that begins basically like a whole nother a whole new set of steps and processes that you have to do so you've completed the legal name change at that point, with respect to what the what the court is how far the court is. So you'll get the court order that says yes, I grant permission for this legal name change. It is so ordered. And then you need to basically buy certified copies of that court order to take with you now everywhere else that you need to go to change your name like your bank account or the driver's license Bureau, or social security, or anywhere else that you use your legal name so anyway as as you can hopefully get the idea here. So that's the process it can take a long time. When I was doing it in Michigan I didn't even include this here but when I was doing it in Michigan it also required a background check. So I had to get fingerprinted and send that information off to the FBI. So there's a lot of steps and a lot of money involved and a lot of time. So let's look at our quality maps and what try to condense some of this complexity into something easier to digest. So hoping, sorry. So here's our quality map on name changes and we on the name change map really focus on the publication requirement because of the impact it can have on people's exposure to violence and discrimination. So if we start with the orange states. So these are these 10 states and for us territories. These are states that the law specifically requires that yes you must publish an announcement about your name change in the local paper. So those states might still vary in how long you have to publish it or how frequently you have to publish it. This also doesn't show the cost aspect of publishing, but it does just show which states require the publication notice. So it focuses on the publication requirement. And then from there moving up to the light green states so these 19 states are ones that either it's not totally clear if they require publication, or they do require it but there's room in the law that allows individual courts to the discretion to say, Okay, you don't need to publish this because it's for a gender related reason or you don't need to publish this because you say that it will. negatively impact your safety. And so that's better than the states that just say, Yes, you have to do this no exceptions. But it's still by leaving it up to the individual discretion or having these unclean requirements, that still means that someone in a given state like that might have a very different experience than someone in another part of that same state. It's an improvement over just you have to do it no matter what, but it's still not as good as what we are ultimately hoping for, which are these dark green states that say, No, you are not required to publish a name change announcement. And I will note that some of these states, some of those dark green states, they either say, you don't have to do it for any kind of name change reason, or some of them say you are not required to publish if it's specifically about a gender related transition. So this is one of those examples where on the map we have this sort of top level view. And then in the citation sheet there is more information about those gradations within a particular category. So what we're generally trying to show, you know, this is the big, big picture landscape about this publication aspect in particular. And then, yeah, the caution icon shows that what we were talking about before with the additional restrictions for folks with a criminal record. And again in the citation sheets there's more information about what those restrictions are. Okay, so that's our quality map on name changes, focusing on the publication requirement. So here we're going to talk specifically about changing the gender marker on a driver's license. That is a distinct process from updating your name on a driver's license. Typically, once you get that legal name change, then you would go to the driver's license bureau and tell them you need to update your name, and there's a whole separate process for that. Instead about the gender marker itself. Because gender markers are one of having consistent gender markers on a person's identity document is one of the biggest things that can help protect trans folks from additional experiences of harassment or discrimination. So, you know, if you think about every time that you might have to show your driver's license, even like at a movie theater or at the bar, the grocery store anytime you use your credit card you need to match your ID. Just any time that you might use your driver's license, if your driver's license doesn't show the gender marker that is accurate and consistent with your gender identity. Every time that you are using that license that's exposing you potentially to harassment or discrimination or mistreatment or denial of service. So this is a really important aspect that we're going to focus on. I want to say first as thinking about like where this sort of process lives or who's in control of this process. Driver's license driver's license policies are typically overseen by the Secretary of State, or that state's department or bureau of motor vehicles, whatever you might call it. So, if you're looking for more information about the process of driver's licenses and ID docs, like updating a driver's license specifically. Maybe the first places I would go to look. In addition to our resources of course, but if, if it's a recent something about driver's license that isn't about the gender marker, I would start with these places. And when we think about the process to update the gender marker there are a couple different things that we are asking about on our on our end. So first, are you even allowed to change the gender marker on your driver's license, or is there at least a clear policy about how to do that. Then if it is allowed, what is the process and what all is required, is there a form. Some states don't have a form they just say, you know show up and talk to somebody and we'll see how it goes. Other states have a form that is easy to use and really helpful and makes it much more streamlined. So how much does this process cost, and then what is required alongside whatever form you might have to submit. So there are some states as we'll see in a minute that in order for you to update the gender marker on your driver's license you have to actually submit some kind of proof quote unquote, excuse me, some kind of proof of your gender change. So that might mean or is defined to mean can vary a lot. And, as you might imagine can be very invasive in some cases. Some states also require what is generally called provider certification, which is basically like a doctor's note saying, yes I'm a doctor and I agree that this person is a different gender and you should update their license so if you think about like taking a doctor's note to have permission to do something. So that same sort of thing but a doctor's note to say what you know your own gender to be which is problematic as well. And some of some states have different definitions of what kind of providers you're allowed to get those notes from and that definition can make it easier or more difficult depending on the case. We'll talk about this in a second. In contrast, there's a, the term self attestation is really a gold standard here and what that means is that I don't need anybody else's permission to say who I am. I can attest for myself, who I am. So, and I'll show you an example of these kinds of forms in a minute. So those are states where you would not need any provider certification, instead, all that you need is the self attestation, I know that this is who I am. And finally, independent of the process of like how easy or difficult is it to change the gender marker. What are the options and not the process but the options that are available to you once you do change the the gender marker and so here we're in particular we're asking about the growing availability of states that allow you to mark X or some kind of non binary or just something other than male or female on the on a license. So these are some of the many questions we're asking when we think about driver's licenses. And here's some examples of the forms that I was telling you about or a lack of form in this case. So this is from Louisiana. And what you can so this is the policy in Louisiana because there is actually no form. And what it. So, one thing to note here is like, okay, at least there is a policy, not all states have a clear policy and that can be very confusing all by itself. But there's no form. So you just have to basically go into the driver's license bureau, and hope that they know what this policy is, and that they will actually follow it. It does require provider certification. As you can see here this medical statement signed by a physician stating that the applicant has undergone a successful gender change or reassignment. And it's from a narrow set of providers so it's only allowed from a physician. You'll see in a second, another form that'll give you a, I think you'll see an example of a contrast here in a second. In addition, it also requires these burdensome. It also has these burdensome requirements like a court order. There's a lot of steps that you have to go through just to change the gender marker on on your driver's license at least in this state. Here's a contrast from Illinois. Actually this one is such a contrast there's no provider attestation at all so let me go back to this for a second. You can see here that this is signed by a physician. So that's what we consider a narrow set of providers it's very medicalized so it has to be a doctor it has to be a physician in states where they have a similar policy and there's actually a form to go along with it. It usually requires them to put in like their medical registration number I forget the term but the doctors like official numbers that shows that they are registered licensed doctor in the state. It's a very narrow set of providers in other states, there might be a broader they might still require provider certification but they accept that information from a broader range of people so that might include a social worker or a psychologist, or other folks and that expansion of what providers count makes it easier to meet this requirement so we still don't like that there's provider certification required but at least there's more options that folks can use. And that can help eliminate some of the obstacles especially if you think about folks who maybe don't have health insurance or it's harder for them to get to a doctor maybe because they live in a rural area and there's fewer options available. That kind of thing. Okay. So this. Logan. Yeah, please. Just to hop in I just want to play we're running a little bit tight on time. Oh, thank you. Don't know if you maybe wanted to run the run the rest of this down a little bit fast. Yep. I appreciate that so much. Okay, so quick, quickly on the gender form here this is from Illinois. You see an absence of any information about doctors or anybody else. All you have to say is, I want this to be my gender. That's all it requires one downside there's no X option here. So here's our current map on driver's licenses. I know it's a lot to look at, but that's because this is a really complicated area of law. So, I won't walk through this in detail but just know we're generally using that same scale of orange is not good. The darker green it gets the better the star icons are the states that also allow you to have the non binary option. And again, in our citation sheet there's a lot more information available about each one of these states including usually a direct link to the form that you need to update your driver's license. And I'm sorry for running late so I will keep moving birth certificates, generally the same questions, it's typically even more difficult to do this. And the Department of Vital Statistics in the state is where I would usually go for this information. Oh wow I didn't even realize how just how late we're going so I'm sorry for that so I'll make sure these slides can get sit around. Again, here's our equality maps. I also want to mention the National Center for transgender equality has an identity documents center that they have a lot of these same information set up. They tend to go into more detail in some places that we don't so especially in states that don't have clear policies or written policies on identity documents. They tend to have more information from folks on the ground about what has worked at least for some people in the state and examples of what you can try. So they're also a really great resource. And then talking about how librarians can go, or what y'all can do. Larry do you want me to just stop and we can just have a conversation. I'm really sorry for running over. Oh no you're fine. Yeah, I think that's that's probably a good option and for folks who can stick around will maybe keep this going for another five or so minutes and again we will circulate both the recording of this webinar and if Logan you're going to circulate your slides as well we can we can do that with our attendees. Yeah, so sorry. Oh yeah no hey hey it happens there's a lot of really good information and I want to definitely thank you for the really comprehensive run down of all these options. You're thinking about myself as also a trans person thinking about how what my options might be here in Colorado, how I might want to approach that this also has raised some considerations that I hadn't even thought about. So thank you. And I do want to kind of leave things open to folks in in the chat and folks in Q&A if you have any questions, please, please do drop those but maybe I want to open things up at to think about right off the top. Maybe sort of your maybe like top two or three things that you would recommend librarians think about as ways to help trans patrons and I'll also kind of add to the group of considerations. What are some ways where we could help people who are researching this policy landscape, how might we be best equipped to help those people. And of course or was that to the audience. Oh no that's to you. Yeah, no the way the Q&A works, they go to you and I'm kind of a filter for that. Yeah, okay, just making sure. So I think some of the top things that librarians can be doing and I mean a lot of it y'all are already doing librarians are asked to fill so many critical social services that really should be the responsibility of the state so we're already doing incredible work. We continue to do that. I think on helping trans patrons in particular, there's just this can be just so confusing and overwhelming and we know that trans folks are already more likely to face economic insecurity, physical and mental health disparities all kinds of things that make even just like navigating and finding this information more difficult in the first place so being able to just help connect folks to resources to help simplify the process. And that itself is, is a big help. And I want to say, you know, you don't need to reinvent the wheel here, you know map is a resource, the NCTE document center that I mentioned as a resource, and wherever you are. There are state LGBTQ quality groups, local LGBTQ community centers, and a number of other organizations and networks like that that can be really helpful for partnering to. And that you don't have to reinvent the wheel you can connect folks to what infrastructure is already there. And if you're thinking about programming or something. Those infrastructures that already exist are great places to network to host something like, maybe you want to do like a legal aid clinic to help trans patrons navigate this process or actually help get them connected to lawyers who will help them do it, like the nitty gritty of it. Absolutely. And I also do want to say somebody dropped into the chat to mention that the process for changing your name in Massachusetts is even easier now. No publication in person court appearance just file and pay which hell yeah we love to hear that. That's great. So, you know, I think I'm not necessarily seeing anything coming in chat and like that was kind of my core questions a lot of the questions that I kind of jotted down to myself, yeah, as things go to you make sure that we had content you and an answering for us so thank you again for such a comprehensive rundown of both the map resources and sort of all of the different considerations that go into that policy research which I think is really helpful so thank you again. And for folks who are still here again this will be tossed in, we will record this put it up on YouTube. There will be that survey that goes out after this so be sure to keep an eye out for for that. And thank you again for joining us today. Thank you so much and I apologize again about the timing. Please folks use my email or if I can help with anything about this or anything else let me know. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you everyone.