On the heels of shooting down a bill that would have harmed churches, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing nonbinary people to select a third gender on their driver's license.
While liberals praise the move, conservatives see the negative impact of such a bill.
"We believe government documents need to reflect biological facts for identification and medical purposes," California Family Council CEO Jonathan Keller says. "Secondly, the bill advances a falsehood; that being male or female, or no gender at all is a choice each person must make, not a fact to celebrate and accept. Laws like this will simply erase any meaningful gender definitions, if being male or female is completely divorced from biological facts."
According to CNN, the bill, SB179, makes California the first state in the country to offer the nonbinary option for people who want their documents to match their gender identity. While most recent bills that Brown, a Democrat, signed will go into effect Jan. 1, 2018, this bill will take effect in 2019.
According to the SF Gate, the bill does not say how the nonbinary option will be abbreviated, leaving that decision to state agencies, but it is likely to be listed as X or NB.
US News and World Report reports that in July, Oregon became the first state to allow people to signify their gender as "not specified" on driver's licenses and identification cards with an "X." The policy change came through the state's Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division. Lawmakers in Oregon and Washington, D.C., have taken steps to legalize a related measure, but have not officially passed such a law.
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