In an environment where my fellow trans people are routinely degraded and smeared as "groomers", creating a thing like a 'registry' for trans people but not for handguns tells you exactly who the AG thinks the enemy is.
And the next Uvalde is right around the corner. But no. The attention is on what's in my pants.
> The Washington Post reports that Paxton’s office made a verbal request to the Texas Department of Public Safety in June for a list of everyone in the past two years who’d changed their gender on their drivers license. Texas has strong public records laws, but the Post’s request to the AG’s office for communications came up empty. It was only DPS which documented the request in writing.
> “Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the DPS head of the drivers license division wrote in a June 30 email. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”
Interesting. I suppose it's because the Texas DMV potentially has consolidated record keeping whereas going to each Texas county court house records keeping has potentially more overhead and is a much larger project?
Changing a gender marker on a driver's license like most(all?) US states requires the presentation of a court order, the original of which is kept in each county's court records department. The Texas AG could theoretically request such court orders from each county in the state and get the same information. If Texas is anything like my state (CA) such records are accessible to the public unless sealed which is a rather uncommon practice(usually held for minors).
I hope you don't mind my asking... but you're a lawyer, and a computer programmer with experience working in a government institution with a rigorous chain of command.
Do you have any pragmatic advice for a developer if they are asked to make a database of a minority group for a government institution?
Well... as it turns out, that's exactly what I'm doing.
In section 549G of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, codified at 10 U.S.C. § 486 ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/486 ), Congress directed the military services to track race/ethnicity data for subjects and victims in investigations, nonjudicial punishment, and courts-martial.
The stated goal is to identify whether significant racial disparities exist and (I assume) try to figure out why (outright racism? implicit biases on the part of commanders? anticipated implicit biases in reporting? different recruiting pools?) and how to fix it.
I don't love the policy, personally, for any number of reasons; but as a military officer it isn't my place to criticize the requirements Congress lays out for us, so I'll leave it at that.
But I think the takeaway is this: it really depends on what the data is going to be used for and what privacy protections exist. In the OP link, ATL seems to be assuming the information will be used for nefarious ends, but they almost neglect (only mention in passing) that the data was to be anonymous unless they end up "required to manually look up documents." As a general rule, I don't think public discourse is aided by assuming the worst about others.
I find the request to break down the data by month to be interesting. I don't know what to make of that, personally, but in my view it suggests that someone is looking to identify trends over time, rather than trying to build a "registry."
As a general rule, I don't think public discourse is aided by assuming the worst about others.
There's a saying: when somebody tells you who they are, believe them.
Paxton has already directed its Department of Family and Protective Services to treat parents as abusers if they even look into their children transitioning:
“The Associated Press called the race in Paxton’s favor just before 11:30 p.m. election night. Paxton received 4,268,826 votes (53.46%), Garza received 3,482,909 (43.62%) and Libertarian Mark Ash received 233,064 (2.92%).
Paxton will serve for a third term as the state’s top attorney after taking office in 2015.”
And this from the "personal freedom" and "small government" party. It's actually Colorado law that the state government cannot compile a list of gun owners.
Texas really did lose its goddamn mind when Trump didn't get a second term. It's gone from Yosemite Sam evil to "compile a list of the untermenschen" evil.
And the next Uvalde is right around the corner. But no. The attention is on what's in my pants.