Relates to ensuring the privacy of name change actions and of sex designation change actions; repealer

Showing the cosponsors who are on Agora, A to Z. The official record may list more.

• Democratic37

Shown in neutral colors by design; Agora is non-partisan.

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Erik Bottcher says this is needed

With the passage of the Gender Recognition Act of 2021, New York stream- lined the process for changing one's name under state law. The GRA outlined an accessible and private means of ensuring New Yorkers' iden- tity documents reflect their gender identities and chosen names. However, a person seeking a name or sex designation in court must still file paperwork with private and legally sensitive information. With the steep rise of e-filing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these sensitive court documents are uploaded to state electronic filing systems where they can be "scraped" by court data aggregator services --- making their personal information searchable online and available to anyone with access to such databases. This level of disclosure places anyone seeking - and sometimes required to seek - the court's help at direct risk of identity theft, harassment, discrimination, and violence. For survivors of domestic violence, stalk- ing, sexual assault, or other crimes, who are using the name change process as a part of a comprehensive safety plan, ready access to this information places them squarely in the sights of the very people from whom they are seeking the court's protection. Though applicants may currently petition for their records to be sealed, the speed with which such documents are uploaded to the internet means that one's birth certificate, driver's license, immigration documents, medical records, orders of protection, and other private information may be "leaked" to the internet before petitions to seal can be granted --making their publication irrevocable. For survivors of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, or other crimes, who are using the name change process as a part of a comprehensive safety, plan, ready access to this information places them squarely in the sights of the very people from whom they are seeking the court's protection. Further- more, such disclosure places transgender and gender non-conforming people, who are already subject to documented high levels of animus and hate violence, at risk of further public humiliation, threats, or discrimination from people both in and outside their communities. This bill will extend to name change legal documents the same privacy courts apply to other deeply personal court matters such as adoption, marriage, and divorce proceedings, as New Jersey has already done state- wide. In doing so, it will align the privacy provided by the GRA with all other name change and sex designation change mechanisms in the state and provide less opportunity for accidental disclosure of or malicious access to private information. Furthermore, by making these proceedings categorically unavailable to the general public, it will relieve already over-burdened courts and clerks from having to determine on a labor-in- tensive, case-by-case basis what name change court records should or should not be subject to seal.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.