Oklahoma law restricting gender status on birth certificates is unjustified, according to new op-ed

Susan J. Pearson, professor of History at Weinberg, recently published an op-ed in The Atlantic in protest against Oklahoma’s decision to restrict nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates.

In the article, Pearson argues that the inclusion of nonbinary status on birth certificates is in line with historical adjustments to the document, including the removal of information about illegitimacy, adoption, and race. As social norms have changed, the United States has been flexible when deciding what is necessary to be included in the document.

Pearson writes, “there is a long American tradition of adapting birth documents to better suit the people they identify… In the past, American society has been willing to adjust birth documents to try to protect, rather than harm, those they identify. Will we do so again now?”

Professor Pearson is a historian of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. She is particularly interested in the cultural politics of reform, the expansion of the state and forms of governance, and the development of American liberalism.

Pearson’s new book, The Birth Certificate: An American History, examines both how birth registration became compulsory in the United States and how birth certificates became trusted forms of identification.

Learn more in The Atlantic’s article, “Oklahoma’s Ban on Nonbinary Birth Certificates Isn’t Just Cruel. It’s Ahistorical.”