Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

This is nothing short of a stunning accomplishment. We owe our thanks to the community members who did the hard, unglamorous, patient work of education. They are heroes. Education is really the only thing that can bring about a significant change in policy like this.

Virginia has adopted a simple, straightforward mechanism for correcting one’s gender marker on a driver’s license, one that comports with the reality of legal gender transition:

As of April 25, 2012, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) implemented a new, and much simpler, policy for changing one’s gender marker on a VA driver’s license. Individuals can now use the Gender Change Request form, known as DL-17, which requires only a signature from a licensed provider, including a doctor, psychiatrist, nurse practitioner, social worker, or counselor attesting to the fact that the applicant is a patient of the provider and that the applicant’s “gender identity” is either female or male and “can reasonably be expected to continue as such for the foreseeable future.”

The previous policy made access to a corrected driver’s license attainable only by those trans Virginians with the financial resources required for gender reassignment surgery. It required either a corrected birth certificate (unavailable under any circumstance in some states), or a court ordered “change” of gender, only obtainable with proof of surgery. This ridiculously high bar for obtaining a Virginia identification card that accurately reflected their gender put the safety of many trans people at risk.

Virginia, with its anti-civil rights history, is one of the last places we would have expected to adopt this reasonable, reality-based policy. Congratulations and kudos to those who made it happen.

With the new policy implemented only days after the historic EEOC ruling affirming that discrimination on the basis of gender is, well, discrimination on the basis of gender, we can say that that the past week has been a very good one for justice.