Last month, I linked to Jen’s post about a proposal to give trans people born in New York City the option to alter the sex on their birth certificates without taking any steps towards medical transition.

The New York City Board of Health has unanimously voted against the proposal.

The city’s health commissioner says officials need to look more carefully at the issue. One concern is whether it would conflict with federal identity document rules being developed.

Transgender people are estimated to number in the tens of thousands in New York City and face severe and pervasive discrimination as a result of their inability to obtain identification, including birth certificates, that matches the gender in which they live said Michael Silverman, Executive Director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.

Silverman said that efforts to secure employment, travel and even do mundane tasks like enter office buildings are fraught with difficulty for transgender people whose identification does not match their gender presentation.

“The proposal recognized the reality of transgender people’s lives and the severe and pervasive discrimination that they experience on a day-to-day basis,” said Silverman.

“For many transgender people, sex reassignment surgery is a financial impossibility. For others, it’s medically inappropriate. And still others choose not to undergo surgery for a variety of personal reasons”

[Via Life, Law, Gender