In recent weeks, the debate over "transgender bathrooms" brought on by House Bill 2 has taken over the media. However, the debate and the bill itself has more often than not erased nonbinary transgender individuals, once again sweeping them under the rug like they don't exist. But on Friday, June 10, an Oregon judge may have just changed that.
On April 27, 52-year-old Army vet Jamie Shupe filed a petition for their gender to be legally changed from "female" to "nonbinary." Shupe was assigned male at birth and began transitioning in 2013 to become female. However, Shupe confronted the binary legal system currently in place, saying, "Male and female are the traditional categories, but they fail to properly categorize people like me. So I challenged that.”
A little over a month after Shupe filed the petition, the Oregon Court ruled in favor of changing the sex marker to "nonbinary." According to experts, this is most likely the first time a case like this has gone through in the United States. Shupe won the case with help from two letters of recommendation from primary care doctors and their attorney, Lake Perriguey. This isn't the first time Perriguey worked on a case that changed the game for LGBT rights; Perriguey was also the lead attorney in a case that eventually led to same-sex marriage being legalized in Oregon.
A judge for an Oregon circuit court declared the legal change in an official document that states, "The sex of Jamie Shupe is hereby changed from female to non-binary. Notice of this legal change shall be posted in a public place in Multnomah County as required by law."
In an interview with The Daily Dot, Shupe stated: "This is incredibly humbling to be the first person to accomplish this. I hope the impact will be that it opened the legal doorway for all that choose to do so to follow me through. We don't deserve to be classified improperly against our will." The legal change is still only recognized by the state, so no gender markers on federal documents, such as a passport or birth certificate, will be altered.
Although this is the first case in the United States where someone legally changed their gender to nonbinary, other countries have already taken steps to recognize nonbinary genders. In 2015, a French citizen became the first person in the country to be legally recognized as gender-neutral. In addition, Australia, Bangladesh, Denmark, Nepal and New Zealand allow the gender marker on passports to be changed to "X" or "Other."
In 2014, over 100,000 people signed a petition pleading for the United States government to "provide an option for [nonbinary] genders on all legal documents and records." The White House responded, but unfortunately the answer was "no." However, perhaps Jamie Shupe's story will create more groundbreaking change for nonbinary people in the near future.
