The Nineteenth Amendment and Gender Identity Discrimination

• Author: Adam P. Romero
• Pages: 48-52

LITIGATION 48

Newly 18 years old, Oliver was thrilled to cast a ballot for the first

time. At his voting location in a Maryland suburb of Washington,

D.C., Oliver presented his identification when asked for it by

a poll worker. This couldn’t be Oliver’s ID, the poll worker

claimed, because the card indicated that Oliver was female. But

Oliver identifies and presents as male; he is one of the 1.55 mil-

lion transgender people in the United States. J L. H

 ., W I., A  I W I

 T   U S (Jan. 2017). Although

Oliver had legally changed his name, he had not updated his

ID to reflect his gender identity because doing so is “a really

expensive process,” as he recounted to NBC News in 2018. Julie

Moreau, Strict ID Laws Could Disenfranchise 78,000 Transgender

Voters, Report Says, NBC N, Aug. 17, 2018, https://www.nbc-

news.com/feature/nbc-out/strict-id-laws-could-disenfran-

chise-78-000-transgender-voters-report-n901696. The poll

worker asked Oliver to step aside, and he was able to vote only

after waiting an hour for poll workers to assess the situation.

He felt humiliated, anxious, and discriminated against. Oliver

decided that in the future, he would vote by absentee ballot to

avoid a repeat scenario.

Although Oliver was ultimately able to vote, the barrie rs to

voting for transgender people who do not have IDs that accu-

rately reflect them are even greater—and they risk disenfran-

chisement—in states that strictly require an individual to provide

The Nineteenth Amendment and

Gender Identity

Discrimination

ADAM P. ROMERO

The author is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and director of legal scholarship and federal policy at the Williams Institute.

a government-issued ID in order to cast a ballot. According to

recent research by UCLA’s Williams Institute, 378,000 voting-

eligible transgender adults do not have accurate ID documents,

and nearly 105,000 of them face substantial barriers to voting and

possible disenfranchisement in the 12 states with the strictest

voter ID laws. K O’N & J L. H, W

I., T P I  V I L

O T V   2020 G E

(2020); J L. H & T N.T. B, W I.,

T P I  V I L 

T V   2018 G E (Aug.

2018). Even in states without such firm rules, transgender vot-

ers can face obstacles like those confronted by Oliver—or worse.

Recognizing this, California recently announced that it would

train poll workers on best practices for interacting with voters

whose gender identities or expressions do not match their names

on voter rolls. Press Release, Secretary of State Alex Padilla

Partners with Equality California Institute to Protect Voting

Rights of Transgender Californians in 2020 (Oct. 25, 2019). Not

having accurate identification can impede many interactions—in

addition to voting—in which we are, sometimes very reason-

ably, asked to prove who we are: securing employment, housing,

and credit; traveling by air or internationally; picking up certain

prescriptions; paying with a credit card; getting stopped by law

enforcement; and in many other vital or mundane situations.