Transgender rights in the United States

Marriage In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court ruled that people have a right to marry without regard to sex. Prior to this ruling, the right of transgender people to marry was often subject to legal challenge—as was the status of their marriages after transitioning, particularly in cases where an individual's birth sex was interpreted to mean a same-sex marriage had taken place. Cases In 1959, Christine Jorgensen was denied a marriage license by a clerk in New York City, on the basis that her birth certificate listed her as male; Jorgensen did not pursue the matter in court. Later that year, Charlotte McLeod, who had undergone gender-affirming surgery in Denmark, married her husband Ralph H. Heidel in Miami. She did not mention her birth sex or legal gender to the state, since Florida's marriage law did not require a birth certificate for the issuance of a marriage license to an individual over the age of 21. In 1976, the New Jersey case M.T. v. J.T. held that trans people who had undergone gender-affirming surgery could marry as the legal sex matching their gender identity, the first ruling of its kind. In Littleton v. Prange (1999), Christie Lee Littleton, a trans woman who had undergone gender-affirming surgery, argued to the Texas 4th Court of Appeals that she was entitled to her deceased husband's estate. The court decided that her marriage certificate was invalid on the basis that her sex should be considered equal to her chromosomes, which were XY (male). As a result, she could not claim her husband's estate. The court subsequently also invalidated her revision to her birth certificate. She appealed to the Supreme Court but it denied certiorari in 2000. considered and rejected Littleton, preferring M.T. v. J.T. instead. In this case, the Kansas Appellate Court concluded that "[A] trial court must consider and decide whether an individual was male or female at the time the individual's marriage license was issued and the individual was married, not simply what the individual's chromosomes were or were not at the moment of birth. The court may use chromosome makeup as one factor, but not the exclusive factor, in arriving at a decision. Aside from chromosomes, we adopt the criteria set forth by Professor Greenberg. On remand, the trial court is directed to consider factors in addition to chromosome makeup, including: gonadal sex, internal morphologic sex, external morphologic sex, hormonal sex, phenotypic sex, assigned sex and gender of rearing, and sexual identity." In 2002, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed the Appellate court decision in part, following Littleton. The custody case of Michael Kantaras made national news. Kantaras filed for divorce from Linda Forsythe in 1998, requesting primary custody of their children. Though he won that case in 2002, it was reversed on appeal in 2004 by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal, which upheld Forsythe's claim that the marriage was invalid because Kantaras, a trans man, should be considered a woman and same-sex marriages were illegal in Florida. Review was denied by the Florida Supreme Court. In re Jose Mauricio LOVO-Lara (2005), the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that for purposes of an immigration visa, a marriage between a "postoperative transsexual" and a person of the opposite sex is considered legitimate provided the state in which the marriage occurred considers it to be a legitimate heterosexual marriage." The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Wisconsin's appeal. Custody Courts are generally allowed to base custody or visitation rulings only on factors that directly affect the best interests of the child. According to this principle, if a transgender parent's gender identity cannot be shown to hurt the child, contact should not be limited, and other custody and visitation orders should not be changed for this reason. Many courts have upheld this principle and have treated transgender custody cases like any other child custody determination—by focusing on standard factors such as parental skills. In Mayfield v. Mayfield, for instance, the court upheld a transgender parent's shared parenting plan because there was no evidence in the record that the parent would not be a "fit, loving and capable parent". Other times, courts claiming to consider a child's interests have ruled against the transgender parent, leading to the parent losing access to their children on the basis of their gender identity. For example, in 1982 in Ohio, in Cisek v. Cisek, the court terminated a transgender parent's visitation rights. The court asked whether the parent's gender transition was "simply an indulgence of some fantasy". It held that there was a risk of both mental and "social harm" to the children, who might be emotionally confused upon seeing "their father as a woman". ==Reproductive rights==