State Senator Mike Cierpiot, a Republican from Lee’s Summit, stands at his desk in the Missouri Senate chamber. Cierpiot filed legislation this year seeking to prohibit transgender Missourians from changing the sex on their birth certificates. (Annelise Hanshaw / Missouri Independent).
A Republican proposal to prohibit transgender Missourians from changing the sex on their birth certificates was briefly debated Wednesday morning by a state Senate committee.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Mike Cierpiot of Lee’s Summit, stated that birth certificates reflect “facts on the day you were born” and should be unchangeable, except in cases of sex development disorders.
Cierpiot introduced the same bill in 2023, but it was never debated in the full Senate. He didn’t submit the bill last year.
The bill was inspired, he said, by a lawsuit in his district in which a transgender student sued the Blue Springs School District in 2015 after being denied access to locker rooms and multi-stall bathrooms. A jury awarded the student $4 million, but the case was appealed and is now pending a Missouri Supreme Court decision.
“The reason this (bill) is needed is because some courts are making decisions partly because of modified birth certificates,” the senator said.
State Senator Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, stated that some transgender Missourians have changed their gender marker on their driver’s license. Following legislative pressure, the Department of Revenue recently reversed its policy.
Cierpiot said he was less concerned about drivers’ licenses.
“A birth certificate is a historic document,” the politician said. “If someone wants to change things later in life, this is quiet on that.”
A Senate committee room was packed with people waiting to testify on the bill, but the public hearing was cut short after 30 minutes, with three speaking in support and four speaking in opposition before the committee chair moved on to the next bill.
Sharon Dunski Vermont, a pediatrician from the St. Louis area, told committee members that the bill is harmful to transgender people.
“People have been attacked, bullied and even killed because their documents don’t reflect who they see themselves to be,” she informed me.
Brattin inquired about the Washington University Transgender Center, which was the subject of a whistleblower’s affidavit in 2023 and shut down after state legislation made gender-affirming care illegal for minors.
Brattin criticized the center, claiming that the treatments were “detrimental to (children’s) health.”
Dunski Vermont, who worked there, stated that the allegations were false.
“I don’t tell you how to be a senator, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to be a doctor,” she said before Brattin interrupted.
Keith Rose, a legal advocate with the nonprofit law firm Center for Growing Justice, says he has helped people change their birth certificates as part of his job.
He referred to birth certificates as “living documents,” rather than historic documents.
“It is common sense that birth records should reflect your lived reality,” according to him.
Few judges are willing to issue court orders to change birth certificates, Rose said, and the situation has gotten more difficult in the last three years.
On Wednesday, the committee did not take action on the bill.
