Court approves Caitlyn Jenner’s legal name and gender change
Caitlyn Jenner is now legally recognised as female – after she had to file with a court to change her name and gender.
The reality TV star and former Oympian opened up about her transition to female earlier this year – and has since become the most famous transgender person in the world, landing her own TV series and even receiving a send-up on South Park.
Earlier this month. she filed papers with the Superior Court of California, asking for her new name and gender to be legally recognised.
The star has requested her name be changed from her birth name to ‘Caitlyn Marie Jenner’, and her gender legally recorded as female.
Trans people are still required to go to court in a number of US states in order to gain legal gender recognition, and to submit ‘evidence’ of transition – a bureaucratic hurdle that often leaves less well-off trans people legally seen as the wrong gender.
Yesterday a Los Angeles Superior Court judge approved the request for name and gender change, granting Jenner legal recognition for the first time.
The star did not attend the hearing herself, and the filings were signed off without her presence.
The filing said: “Petitioner now seeks to change her legal name and gender pursuant to California Code of Civil Procedure … in order to conform to her gender identity.”
Asking the court to keep some details private, she notes: “Although public support for my transition has been overwhelmingly supportive, I am also receiving unwelcome negative attention from private citizens, including threats of bodily harm.”
By contrast to the convoluted system, under a new simplified law that came into effect in the Republic of Ireland this month, Ms Jenner would simply have to send off a two-page form to be legally recognised as female.
Despite being trans, the Olympian recently admitted to Ellen DeGeneres that she used to oppose equal marriage.
Explaining that she had changed her mind on the issue, she said: “If the word ‘marriage’ is really, really that important to you, I can go with it.”
However, the TV host appeared to have been taken aback by the answer – later saying: “She said ‘if the word marriage is that important’ …and I was like, ‘it is, because that’s the word!’. We want the same thing as everybody.”
