General Note: Certain historical sources, such as those created by the Erickson Educational Foundation, claim that, in 1974 for instance, 25 states had already "issued new or amended certificates" for trans people, but these claims aren't cited in any way. It must be noted that, at the time, state vital records systems and procedures were largely decentralized with significant discretionary power afforded to local registrars and bureaucrats. In other words, the changes that were made often weren't done so under a given state's overarching policy, but rather at the discretion of individual actors under a broad framework that contained no explicit prohibition on those amendments. Because this project aims to catalogue the right to a legal gender change in a more formal sense, these types of changes have been excluded from the timeline. For the 8 states where unwritten policies are included as the first status date (AK, FL, MS, NY, PA, RI, SD, and TX), the date shown reflects the date the policies were first credibly corroborrated by the state itself or by local news sources, which Transitics has meticulously searched through as part of this project. These policies have otherwise been lost to time.
Can I cite this work? Absolutely! Just make sure to credit me :)