Legal group helps trans people file court name change, gender marker documents

Around the time Emily Ajir began hormone replacement therapy in late 2022, the 23-year-old also started to research the process of legally changing her name and gender marker. 

Ajir knew she wanted to live her authentic self, with a chosen name to match. It was the prospect of paying $270 for court filing fees that stopped her. 

“I knew I wanted to take steps toward transition to live more authentically,” she said. “I saw it was going to be a complicated (legal) process and cost close to $300. I just put it on the back burner and decided to pursue it later.” 

Ajir found out in July that Nevada Legal Services, which has a LGBTQ+ Advocacy Initiative,  recently started offering legal assistance at the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada every Wednesday. 

Lawyers with the group help transgender people wanting to legally change their names and gender markers. 

When Ajir sat down with a list of questions, she only thought she would be getting answers on navigating the court process, not free representation to help facilitate court filings. 

“She started asking me for my information, my (birth) name and my chosen name,” Ajir said. “Then she said it wouldn’t be any cost.”

Ajir began to cry when she realized that the clinic wasn’t just answering questions but would complete the court filing to legally change her name and gender marker including paying the costs. 

Heidi Foreman-Toney, the outreach coordinator for Nevada Legal Services, said the process is quick and easy.

“The challenge is knowing the steps,” she said. “The challenge is the filing because we started to get a backlog because we never expected to see so many people who needed this service.”

Because of the backlog of clients, Nevada Legal Services, which provides assistance to low-income residents within the state, is still in the process of filing Ajir’s court documents, but it should be completed soon. 

Once Ajir receives the court order granting the change, she can get all her documents updated. 

“When I was born, I was given the wrong name and the wrong gender marker,” Ajir said. “It’s an inconsistency I had to live with my entire life. It’s an error that’s been forced on me that I had to live with my whole life. To be able to easily, efficiently and frankly quickly finally fix that error, it’s amazing.” 

Nevada Legal Services and the LGBTQ Center began collaborating on the service in March as a way to address the legal needs of the gay and trans community.

“There are no law firms that specifically address the issues faced by people who identify as LGBTQ in our state,” Foreman-Toney said.  

Though people can use private attorneys, the process is expensive.

Nevada Legal Services had already been offering civil legal assistance at the Family Huntridge Clinic, the largest LGBTQ+ centered medical clinic in Southern Nevada, since 2022. 

The group provides legal help to people enrolled in the federal Ryan White Part B assistance program, which provides medical services for people living with HIV. Assistance can vary from landlord-tenant disputes and eviction cases to family law and estate planning. 

“Someone will come in for a medical appointment and say they lost custody of their kids or are trying to deal with getting evicted,” Foreman-Toney said. “Once they finish their medical appointment, we do an intake to address their legal issues.” 

The Huntridge clinic closed in April due to financial constraints but reopened in August. Nevada Legal Services is planning to resume assistance. 

The idea to expand legal help for the LGBTQ community aligned with the Center’s plans to expand programming and resources for the transgender community. 

Talking with clients, Andre Martin, the director of inclusive programming at the center, said it was clear the center needed to do a gender marker and name change workshop.

“I think people don’t realize how important it is and how liberating it is for individuals to kill their deadname,” Martin said. “And now they want their name to match who they are.”

More than 50 people have sought assistance since the service began being offered in March. Since it’s primarily through word of mouth, Foreman-Toney thinks the numbers will only grow. 

Williams Institute out of the UCLA School of Law, which does research on sexual orientation and gender identity, estimates 476,000 trans adults nationwide don’t have identification with the correct gender marker. 

Clients have included both adults and eight minor cases, which require parental approval. 

“Every single child who walked through the door had two parents who agreed,” Foreman-Toney said. “We have not had one parent who has disagreed, which might be a shock to people that parents are supporting their kids.”

In the course of working with clients over the last few months, Foreman-Toney said she realized there is a lot of misinformation about the requirements for legally changing names that has impeded people from pursuing the legal process. 

Some clients think they need to take an ad out in the newspaper and announce a new name, which only applies when the change isn’t connected to gender identity. 

Some worried they need to get documents notarized, when that’s not the case. 

Changing names and gender markers is not only about helping people live their authentic selves, Martin said. 

Without proper documents, trans people face barriers getting employment and housing. 

“We have people who do get through the application process because they have a gender neutral name, then they come in for an interview and there is a problem,” he said. “Or when (employers) see their ID and it says their deadname. It causes a barrier in employment.”  

“The person I actually am”

Despite what everyone in her life told her, Ajir never felt like a cisgender man.

“Since 12, I had an inkling that I’m not like these other guys,” she said. “Until around 18 I didn’t have the capacity to explore that and put words to it.”

Initially, Ajir came out as nonbinary, but realized that was compromising to appease people. In recent years she accepted who she was. 

“I am a trans woman and want people to see me as a woman,” she said.

In the fall of 2022 Ajir was at a local music festival hosted at a dive bar where she was reading a eulogy of another trans woman who died in 2021. Her name was Emily Rose Matview.

Ajir was drawn to Matview and how people would talk about her presence in the community. 

“Even though I never met her, I kind of missed her in a way,” Ajir said. “She just felt like someone I wish I could have met.”

She grew to love the name Emily, and adopted it for herself. 

Ajir didn’t immediately seek to change her deadname – the name given at birth – as she started hormone therapy in December. 

Eventually, she said she “passed the event horizon that passing as a dude didn’t really work.”

Without documentation to match her identity, classes at UNLV, applying for jobs and even going to the bar brought humiliating and terrifying experiences for Ajir. 

“There were times I regretted asserting my real name and identity in the classroom,” she said. “I’ve had instructors ask me way too many questions about it in the middle of the class. Once before class started, one instructor started making suggestions for a ‘better name’ and asked other students that were there early what they thought. It honestly felt humiliating, like my identity was abstracted from my experience and made into a class discussion.”  

Seeking employment wasn’t different. 

Everytime Ajir applied for a job, she asked herself: “should I risk putting down a feminine preferred name or my deadname?”

“It feels dishonest to use my deadname,” she said. “Like I’m lying on my resume about being a cis guy.” 

Even just going to the bar or the gym, whenever Ajir presented an identification with her deadname it made her anxious.  

“I go up to the bar, and how is the bartender going to react to seeing the picture on my ID, which is out of date,” Ajir said. “How are they going to react to the name I’m not using and the face I’m not wearing?”

Ajir graduated from UNLV in May and has been struggling to find a job in journalism or anywhere for that matter. 

She knows the labor pool is tough, but is ready for her legal change to be finished to at least get rid of one barrier. 

“I want to take a big swing when looking for a job, in particular in the field I actually want to work in,” she said. “I want to be able to do that as the person I actually am and not worry about people’s preconceptions.”