Transgender man sues Indiana to change name

31-year-old granted asylum from Mexico challenges citizen law

INDIANAPOLIS — A transgender man granted asylum by the U.S. last year is challenging an Indiana law that prevents him from changing his first name to a male name that matches his gender identity.

The 31-year-old, who was brought to Indiana from Mexico illegally by his parents at age six, contends in his federal lawsuit that Indiana’s law requiring anyone seeking a namechange to provide proof of U.S. citizenship is unconstitutional and essentially forces him to “out” himself as transgender whenever he must display his driver’s license.

That law was passed in 2010 amid what his attorneys say was a spate of “anti-immigrant lawmaking” in several states.

The man’s federal lawsuit says his driver’s license lists his sex as male alongside the female birth name he wants changed, a contradiction that’s forced him to disclose to complete strangers the “deeply personal information” that he’s transgender, causing him embarrassment, humiliation and fears of harassment and violence.

The man, identified in the suit only as “John Doe,” recalled in an interview the humiliation he faced when he visited an emergency room in 2013 for neck pain and nurses began talking about him and laughing when he told one he was transgender after she noticed his ID’s female name.

“I felt really ashamed. I was in pain and I had to go through all that just to get medication,” he told The Associated Press, declining to give his name to protect his privacy. “I’ve done everything I can and just because of that law I can’t live a normal life like everyone else. I just hate it.”

The male gender and female name on his driver’s license are the result of dissonance between state and federal rules.

The Indiana man was granted permission in 2013 to live and work legally in the U.S. under a federal government program that shields immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. At the same time, his gender was changed to male on all his U.S. government documents based on his diagnosis of gender dysphoria, in which a person feels extreme distress because of a disconnect between their birth sex and gender identity, his attorneys said.