Trans woman barred from Ohio race
A transgender woman was disqualified from a race for the Ohio House of Representatives after she did not include her previous name in election materials, raising the prospect that transgender candidates would face similar barriers elsewhere.
Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer running as a Democrat in Ohio’s 50th District, was informed in a letter from the Stark County Board of Elections on Tuesday that she had been disqualified from the state House race.
The board cited a state law that requires a person running for office to list on the candidacy petition any name changes within five years of an election, and it gave Joy until Friday afternoon to appeal.
Joy, who hopes to be among the first openly transgender elected officials in Ohio, said in an interview that she had appealed the board’s decision and planned to challenge the law in court.
“Had I known this law existed, I likely would have bit the bullet and put my deadname next to my legal name,” she said, using a term for a transgender person’s birth name.
“I would have done it because I care enough to get on the ballot, but this will be a huge barrier to entry for transgender people,” she said, adding that many transgender people have their birth names sealed out of concern for their safety.
Joy noted in her appeal letter that Ohio’s candidate guide made no mention of the law and that the county elections board had not raised any concerns when she submitted the dozens of signatures required to secure a place on the ballot.
She also argued that the law had been “applied unevenly.” At least two other transgender legislative candidates will appear on ballots in Ohio this year despite not having included prior names in their election paperwork, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a national organization that supports LGBTQ candidates. The organization said it was not clear if those candidates changed their names within the last five years.
Joy, 42, grew up in a conservative Christian household. She came out as transgender two years ago after the death of her father, who she said would have disapproved of her decision to transition. She also left her job running the family’s manufacturing company to work as a photographer.
She said she chose to publicize her transition on social media and in a podcast as Republicans have advanced a wave of measures nationwide restricting medical care for transgender people, regulating which public bathrooms they can use and dictating which youth sports teams they can play on.
“The Republicans have an absolute stranglehold supermajority in Ohio, and I want to give other people my age the courage to get out and run or vote,” she said. “If they can see a trans girl in red Ohio running for office, maybe they’ll be like, ‘Well, I can do it, too.’”
Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA who focuses on voting rights, said the Ohio statute had a practical purpose.
“The reason you’d want to know prior names of a candidate is if they have something in their past they were trying to hide, like a criminal history or some embarrassing incidents,” he said. “Voters want to be able to judge backgrounds.”
However, in the history of voting rights in the United States, many laws that appeared neutral had the consequence of being exclusionary, said Atiba Ellis, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
“In the anti-transgender political environment in Ohio, this disqualification raises that specter of concern that this becomes a new mechanism of exclusion,” he said.
Melanie Amato, a spokesperson for the Ohio secretary of state, said the office was aware of the disqualification.
“The law applies to everyone and there is no discussion to have this law amended at this time,” Amato said in an email.
A record number of transgender candidates sought and won office last year, according to Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024.
Meloy said there was no accounting of how many states had laws like Ohio’s that could pose a barrier for such candidates.
In 2017, there were no known openly transgender legislators in the United States, according to an LGBTQ+ Victory Fund database. This year, at least 14 transgender people are serving in state legislatures.