OKLAHOMA CITY (Jan. 27, 2025) – Attorney General Gentner Drummond has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Oklahoma’s policy of recording and maintaining sex on birth certificates is clearly constitutional.
Drummond is challenging a wayward ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that Oklahoma’s approach is somehow barred by the U.S. Constitution because the state will not change the sex designation to match an individual’s gender identity.
He noted in the brief filed last week that the Tenth Circuit’s decision conflicts with a well-reasoned decision from the Sixth Circuit upholding a similar policy in Tennessee. Drummond argued that the Tenth Circuit wrongly found the state was discriminating based on transgender status.
“Nothing in the Constitution prohibits States from permanently documenting sex on a birth certificate. A newborn’s sex is an objective fact that has long been recorded and preserved in state records,” the brief states.
The filing goes on to assert that Oklahoma “does not guarantee anyone a birth certificate matching gender identity, only a certificate that accurately records a historical fact: the sex of each newborn.”
The petition asks the Supreme Court to determine whether the Equal Protection Clause requires a state to alter its official certificate documenting a person’s sex at birth to represent that person’s current gender identity.
