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Oregon court allows a person to choose neither sex

 
Published June 14, 2016

A judge in Oregon has granted a petition allowing a person to legally choose neither sex and be classified as nonbinary: an important development for transgender Americans while civil rights and sexual identity are in the national spotlight, advocates and legal experts said.

Although the petition was granted with little fanfare in a two-paragraph decision Friday, experts said that, to their knowledge, the ruling was the first of its kind in the country.

Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, Calif., described the decision in an email as a "historic step" toward the government's recognizing "nonbinary members of our community and ensuring they have access to identity documents that reflect who they are, just like everyone else."

The person seeking the new designation, Jamie Shupe of Portland, Ore., is a retired Army sergeant born with male anatomy who had successfully battled the military to be given discharge papers that reflected the female sex.

Jamie — who prefers to use only a first name and the pronouns "they" and "their," instead of singular pronouns — underwent hormone treatments to transition to a woman. But ultimately, neither sex fit, Jamie said in an interview Friday.

Oregon law does not specifically limit gender choices to male or female. For decades, the legal process for a change of sex has been similar to the process for changing a name, said Lake Perriguey, the lawyer who represented Jamie.

Jamie described the ruling as "totally being liberated from the boundaries of being male or female."