When the state of Alabama finally issued Darcy Corbitt a driving license that matched her gender identity, she was the first to drive to get a milkshake. “I literally drove for two hours,” she explains. The Daily Beast. “I got a burger, and I walked around listening to music. It was a very juvenile thing to do, but I was feeling free.”
There was a sense of liberation to which Corbitt was unaccounted for. Corbitt moved from North Dakota to Alabama in 2017 to pursue a PhD at Auburn University, and soon after, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) denied him a driving license with a female gender marker. Officials said she doesn’t meet state policy that requires trans people to undergo gender-affirming surgery before their licenses can be reformed.
When her out-of-state license expired in September 2020, Corbitt could no longer drive, and had not had a valid license for six months. Corbitt, who lives in a rural area outside Auburn, was forced to live with her parents and depend on family and friends to get her wherever she needed to go. She missed her aunt’s funeral as no one was able to drive her. All the while, Corbitt says she kept making insurance and monthly payments on a car she couldn’t legally operate.
“I felt like I was a prisoner, that I no longer had freedom,” she says. “I can’t go where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go. I feel like I was guilty of a crime I didn’t commit, like I’m being punished by the state for who I am “
Although the US District Court for the Central District of Alabama ruled in January 2021 that the state’s policy was unconstitutional and ordered the DMV to issue a rightful driver’s license to Corbitt, she is still fighting to be free. Alabama asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an earlier ruling, the judges heard oral arguments in the case on Tuesday. The trial marks the first time a US federal appeals court has weighed in on trans people’s right to licenses that correspond to their living identities.
The final verdict could have a surprising effect on another ongoing trans rights fight in Alabama. A bill that would bar doctors and other medical providers from offering gender-affirming care to trans minors under the age of 19 is currently in the Alabama House of hearing after passing the Senate by a margin of 24-6 in February. is waiting. Known as SB 184 in the Senate and HB 266 in the House, the law would make hormone and puberty inhibitors a Class C felony in Alabama. Medical providers could face up to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
According to LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, the combination of Alabama’s efforts to limit trans youth health care and prevent trans people from correcting their ID may have unintended consequences. Together, these rules would make it effectively impossible for trans drivers under the age of 19 to obtain their license.
“Together they are one such example of the double bind that trans people often find themselves in,” says Gabriel Arkles, senior counsel for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF). the daily beast, “We can’t get an ID that allows us to navigate the world safely unless we get some kind of health care. And then we can’t get access to health care because they really want to make it a felony.”
Under the policies fighting to defend in an Alabama courtroom, arcs say there is a difference between how they are written and how they are actually enforced. Although the DMV only stipulates a requirement that trans drivers receive gender-affirming surgery before correcting their licenses, that language is ambiguous and can be interpreted inconsistently. He says the state’s expectation is that “everyone has at least genital surgery” but Alabama officials have said on several occasions that people may also need “top surgery” to meet the requirement. Is.
The way this all works in practice is that trans applicants are required to provide a letter from a doctor stating that they have “performed complete and irreversible gender reassignment surgery on this person,” Arkles said. According to. If the letter doesn’t use that exact language, it says that DMV workers will call the surgeon’s office and ask: “Well, was this a Full Reassignment? ,
Those protocols, Arkles says, are likely to place a serious burden on trans youth, who would be unable to meet those requirements if Alabama bans gender-affirming medical care for people under the age of 19. Even now, young people usually do not receive any type of gender. Confirmatory surgery is not performed until they reach the age of 18, and it can be a year-long process that involves being placed on multiple waiting lists. There are only three doctors in the entire state who also specialize in trans-firming care.
Thus, the reality is that if Alabama has its way, trans youth may have to wait until the age of 19 to obtain a license. “It’s unlikely to disappear that someone who wasn’t able to have access to any form of gender-affirming care—not therapy, not hormones, nothing—suddenly underwent surgery at the age of 19. Will also be able to achieve the look, much less genital surgery,” he says.
While trans people are legally allowed to drive without a license in Alabama, doing so can be extremely dangerous. A 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) found that 32 percent of trans people who presented an ID that did not match their living gender were harassed or assaulted.
Destiny Clark has experienced firsthand how difficult it can be to get a modified driver’s license as a trans person in Alabama. When she first went to the DMV in April 2015, she brought in a court order certifying her legal name change and a surgeon’s letter. She says a DMV representative told her that the procedures she’s already gone through are “not good enough” and that additional operations will be needed before her gender marker correction can be approved.
Clark, a health care worker for people living with HIV, went 10 years without the right license. She says that not having access to an ID matching her gender identity was preventing her from going anywhere for fear of harassment or violence that she would need to make a card. She only went to places where she knew she was safe.
,I knew that if I showed my driver’s license to the wrong person, it could injure or kill me. He was always in the back of my mind.,
, Destiny Clark
“It was a lot of work,” she tells The Daily Beast. “If I had to go to the store to buy a drink, my boyfriend would always go. I would only go to a restaurant where I knew the server. It was stressful because I know who I am, and I know that I am a woman. But I knew that if I showed my driving license to the wrong person, it could injure me or kill me. It was always on my mind.”
Clark says it’s “really sad” to learn that countless trans youth in Alabama may be subjected to the same abuse, but it also prompts them to lobby for state policies to be reversed. Along with Corbitt and a third unnamed defendant, he is a co-plaintiff in the TLDEF lawsuit currently being heard by the 11th Circuit. Plaintiffs are also being represented in this case by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Alabama.
After being denied the right driver’s license twice, Clarke says she cried “tears of joy” in January 2021, when a lower court ruling finally paved the way for getting the ID she’s long sought Had it. After being forced to wait for an hour in a courthouse basement, she was finally granted a license that said “Destiny Clark, lady,” along with a letter to state that it was intended to be a courthouse. I have to fight the verdict.
That moment was “bittersweet,” Clark recalls. “The state of Alabama wanted to make sure I had a letter saying they thought they were going to win the case and that they would revoke my driver’s license, but at my cost,” she says. “So it was a happy day, but it was like, ‘You’re not going to stop. You’re going to drag this out.'”
,I’m actually so grateful that we got every opportunity to go to court to let the state of Alabama go on record, explaining how much they hate transgender people.,
, Darcy Corbitt
Trans people in Alabama say they don’t know what’s coming next. According to TLDEF, a House vote on Alabama’s proposed trans youth medical care ban is expected in the coming weeks, but the 11th Circuit is unlikely to reform driver’s licenses for at least six months. Alabama is also weighing the passage of legislation that would prohibit trans students in K-12 schools from using restrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity.
Ivey, the government of Alabama, is expected to sign a post-trans health care bill if it reaches their desk. While this would make Alabama only the third US state after Arkansas and Tennessee to limit gender-affirming medical care, the law would also force teachers and other school workers to exclude trans students from their parents. The bill prohibits teachers from withholding information about a student’s gender identity from their families.
But in the face of these attacks on trans youth, Corbitt says that seeing the lives they will be impacted “reinforces my resolve to be as big a pest as possible for the state of Alabama, not digging in and letting them win.” My resolve for it gets stronger.”
“I’m really grateful that we’ve had every opportunity to go to court to let the state of Alabama go on record, explaining how much they hate transgender people,” she says. “All these outrageous bills they’re running right now that would criminalize being transgender are additional evidence of the fact. It sounds like they’d rather have people kill themselves than think about their work.”
