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Virginia Court Rejects Retroactive Attempt to Seal Name Change Records
The decision came despite the applicant's objection, ten months after the name change, that the change was needed to prevent "potential endangerment and/or discrimination through publicly disclosed record of the transgender applicant."
From In re: E.B.M., decided July 26 by Judge David A. Oblon (Va. Cir. Ct. Fairfax County):
The issue before the Court is whether it may seal from public inspection a name change order and related records 21-days after entry of the order. The Court holds it may not do so.
Even if the Court had authority to seal the name change order and related records, the movant in the present case failed to proffer a serious threat to her health or safety to justify sealing the public record.
For both reasons the Court will issue an Order denying the motion to seal….
Over ten months after the Court entered the name change order, on July 12, 2023, E.B.M. filed the present motion, citing no legal authority for the Court to seal the name change Order and related records so long after entry of the Order.
E.B.M. told the Court she wanted to seal the name change Order and related records due to a general fear of harm from transgender community opponents. She cited no current particularized or specific harm towards her arising from the public name change….
Virginia Code § 8.01-217(F) reads:
The [name change] order shall contain no identifying information other than the applicant's former name or names, new name, and current address. The clerk of the court shall spread the order upon the current deed book in his office, index it in both the old and new names, and transmit a certified copy of the order and the application to the State Registrar of Vital Records and the Central Criminal Records Exchange….
There is an exception to § 8.01-217(F), which allows the Court to seal the name change records and prevent the name change order from being indexed and transmitted to state agencies. Virginia Code § 8.01-217(G) reads:
If the applicant shall show cause to believe that in the event his change of name should become a public record, a serious threat to the health or safety of the applicant or his immediate family would exist, the chief judge of the circuit court may waive the requirement that the application be under oath or the court may order the record sealed ….
The General Assembly clearly intended a petitioner to request the sealing of name change records at the time of the petition. [Statutory construction details omitted. -EV] … In the present case E.B.M. is not an "applicant." She won her name change petition almost ten months ago. Her change of name is already a public record and the Court already spread and indexed the name change Order. The Clerk already transmitted a certified copy of the Order to the State Registrar and the Central Criminal Records Exchange. Thus, E.B.M. lacks standing as an "applicant" and is seeking to prevent things that have already happened.
The General Assembly could grant the Court power to expunge name change orders already indexed and transmitted but has not done so. Without this authority, the Court lacks the power to claw back records already transmitted to the State Registrar of Vital Records and the Central Criminal Records Exchange….
Independent from Virginia Code § 8.01-217(G), the Court lacks active jurisdiction to reopen the final order granting E.B.M. her name change petition. [Under Virginia law, t]he Court lost jurisdiction over that final order 21-days after entry…. Even if the Court had authority to seal name change orders more than 21-days after entry, the Court finds Petitioner failed to allege or proffer a "serious threat" to her health or safety to justify sealing the record.
E.B.M., in her Motion to Seal Change of Name, stated that she wanted to prevent "potential endangerment and/or discrimination through publicly disclosed record of the transgender applicant." At the July 21, 2023, hearing on her motion she amplified her reasons to include concerns due to her political activism. However, and fortunately, she did not cite a single specific or particularized fear that would justify sealing the name change records. She only pointed to generalized and imagined future fears or harms. She implicitly asks the Court to amend the statute to replace the phrase "serious threat" with "a generalized concern." The Court must apply the law as is written, however….
Note that the court used E.B.M.'s initials in the caption of the opinion at E.B.M.'s request, but noted that "[t]he record is not sealed." This likely avoids any violation of the public right of access, since the public can indeed determine E.B.M.'s name from the record, given that the opinion cites the case number—just not from the text of the opinion itself.
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Seems correct as a matter of statute.
Should woulda coulda made the showing at the time of the name change. In fairness, the climate has shifted in just the last ten months thanks to a concerted, and toxic, campaign. Heck, you can see the effects of it in the comments section here.
Even so, it seems the purpose of the exception is for specific threats of harm (such as in a domestic violence case or something similar), and I don’t think the generalized issues would be sufficient.
Yeah, you can see from the comments here that some people want to treat the possibility that people might call a guy a “guy” even after a boob job and putting on a dress as equivalent to having your kneecaps broken with a baseball bat.
I am not sure why you feel it is necessary to defend the hate and vitriol directed toward a community of people that is already a traditional target of violence and scorn.
I mean, we have seen in the past how authoritarians love to scapegoat minorities and use them to whip up people because, hey, it’s easy to do. Doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it good.
Your lack of empathy and humanity are noted. I hope you feel better having expressed that.
Look, 90% of the fraction of the “hate and vitrol” that isn’t imaginary on your part is due to the outrageous demand that we don’t just let these loons do what they want, but instead have to enable them and humor their delusions, while letting people in positions of trust try to encourage our own children to become similarly insane.
Calling them loons and saying that their desire to desire to live their lives as the rest of us do is some giant imposition on you (or, even worse, humoring their delusion) is everything that is needed to know.
It is remarkable that you believe your dehumanizing rhetoric isn’t part and parcel of the same playbook we have seen trotted out for centuries now, regardless of what minority target is the subject of the current ire. Again, I cannot make you feel empathetic, and I cannot require you to extend the same humanity to other that you would wish others would extend to you, I will simply reiterate that your words are what they are, and people see them as exactly that.
I’m calling them loons because they’re denying reality and mutilating themselves. If they’d leave the rest of us alone while doing this, I’d be more polite, but they’re being encouraged to be aggressive about demanding that everybody play along with their insanity.
I am quite sure that the whole, “I was fine with ‘those people’ until they became too uppity,” has been used many times before, and not to the glory of those who used it.
Since, as I wrote before, you can’t make someone empathetic or have a basic level of humanity, I will end with this:
1. Notice how, even though I disagree with the overall policy implication, I actually read what the court did and agreed as a matter of law? You might try that sometime!
2. There are, in fact, actual issues worthy of serious conversation. For example, there are people that express genuine differences of opinions regarding timing of transitioning and high-level women’s athletics, and I think that these conversations are worthy of serious discussion. But I also think that the opinions of people like you, who cannot help but express hate, are rightfully excluded from the same.
Again, I think it is notable and sad that it is people like you who force families to flee places. Even a family as rich and protected (and loved) as Dwyane Wade’s family had to leave Florida because of the hateful bigotry espoused by people like you.
To you, it’s all just fun and games. But real people get hurt. If you’re okay with that, well, I can’t make you understand.
You don’t understand that there are two realities here. Obviously, there’s a reality in which people are assigned male at birth based on observed characteristics- that’s “sex” and it’s relevant to certain things.
But how a person identifies, especially a person with gender dysphoria, is also a reality. And that’s where you lack empathy. You have to think about what gender dysphoria is- this intense conflict between how one feels and how one’s body appears. And you deal with that conflict by transitioning. That’s reality too.
So when you say they are “loons” because they are “denying reality”, no, you are incorrect. You are denying half of reality. You are refusing to accept that the things people feel are just as real to them as their assigned sex.
And it’s funny because, there’s an entire other subject area, religion, where conservatives take the exact opposite position. They get very mad at Lefty atheists who say things like “religious people are just deluded, it’s the opiate of the masses, they are just denying the reality of death”. Those things are seen as insensitive because a religious person is not a “loon”- a religious person is a person who feels the pull of faith, and the pull of faith is just as real as the biological reality of death.
No, Brett, these aren’t loons. These are people you simply refuse to empathize with.
They are “loons” in that they are denying the reality that no matter what they feel they can never become the opposite sex. They can present as such, have surgeries to mimic the appearance of the sex they choose, but can never become that sex.
“Loon” may be crude, but they are suffering a form of mental illness much as a 98 pound anorexic believes that they are fat.
“You don’t understand that there are two realities here.”
No, absolutely not. You don’t understand that there CAN’T be two realities here. Definitionally!
As Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” There are NEVER two “realities”, that’s what makes “reality” reality, rather than an opinion.
Reality doesn’t care how a person ‘identifies’. How a person ‘identifies’ is utterly irrelevant to reality.
So, yes, that somebody suffers from gender dysphoria is an aspect of reality. But gender dysphoria is a matter of being irrationally convinced that you’re a different sex than you actually are in reality.
“You are refusing to accept that the things people feel are just as real to them as their assigned sex.”
You’re not “assigned” a sex. That’s a bullshit propaganda term that the left invented for this purpose. You don’t get born in the hospital, and a doctor says, “Oh, we’re running a bit short on females today, so I’ll check “female” on the chart.” THAT would be ‘assigning’, which is to say allocating, you a sex.
The doctor observes your sex, they don’t “assign” it. It exists utterly independent of what you would prefer it to be, or due to mental pathology “feel” it to be.
The doctor may on rare occasions be mistaken, on account of rare genetic anomalies, but they only reason they’re capable of being mistaken in the first places is that they’re NOT “assigning” sexes.
So, yes, it may seem very real to them that they’re actually a woman, despite the external genitalia and Y chromosome, but that’s just to say that they really ARE deluded.
And what the hell does it even mean for a biological male to “feel” that they’re “really a woman”? They’ve no direct experience of being a woman, nothing to compare their internal experience to! How in the world can they be sure that what they’re feeling, and claim to be “feeling like a woman” isn’t, in fact, what a man feels like? In fact, as they objectively ARE a man, it IS what a man, them, feels like.
It makes about as much sense as it would for them to say that they “identify” as seeing red where other people see green.
You’re conflating biology, psychology, neurology, sociology all over the place, such that all four of these act like biology merely because they interact with biology.
You’re flat wrong if this is your take. Confidently, ignorantly, wrong.
No, what I’m refusing to do is to conflate biology and psychology. Sex is biology. Thinking you’re the other sex is psychology, but it’s pathological psychology.
It really is no different from weighing 65 pounds is biology, and thinking you’re grossly overweight is psychology. The essence of “dysmorphia” is exactly that your subjective impression of yourself conflicts with reality. It wouldn’t be a dysmorphia if it were accurate.
And if you’re chopping off dicks and breasts, it’s sex, not “gender”, that they’re worried about.
“You’re conflating biology, psychology, neurology, sociology all over the place, such that all four of these act like biology merely because they interact with biology.”
This isn’t an argument.
“You’re not “assigned” a sex.”
Yup. And sex is observed beginning way before birth.
Of course, if a doctor holds up a baby girl and says, “it’s a boy!” and she grows up identifying as a girl, she isn’t transgender in any meaningful sense.
But if she has gender dysphoria and identifies as a boy, she is transgender even though she was “assigned” male at birth.
It really is the tiniest things that drive the greatest hatreds. Pronouns. “Assigned.” “Humoring.”
It really is the tiniest things that drive the greatest hatreds.
Yup. Because people understand that if the meaning of what were once some of the simplest words to understand, he and she, can be changed, then there is no longer any way to express objective truth.
Oh you sweet trivial child with nothing important or significant to get mad about, wait till you hear about linguistic drift. And of course there’s no change here. People have been calling trans men ‘he’ and trans women ‘she’ for decades.
Why do you guys hate facts so bad?
I hate the fact that there’s a modern fascist hate-campaign against a vulnerable minority.
One more response and I’m out. Another incorrect personal insult. I absolutely understand the difference between soecific and general – I basically made the point that Dilan spoke specifically and you specifically insulted one group.
You made a very specific statement about Catholics which is, in fact, incorrect. What Dilan said is reasonable and accurate. What you said was insulting to a very large group of people.
And, btw, the Catholic Church is not really conservative.
Not sure what ‘leave the rest of us alone’ looks like in this context. ‘Shut up while we pass laws against them and say the most appalling dehumanising slanderous things about them?’
Brett, as someone whose views on this topic are surely closer to yours than loki13’s, may I ask:
Please stop trying to help.
I’m not sure if it a growing trend everywhere, but in Virginia sealed name changes are often used to thwart collections activity: if a new name appears and there is no on-the-record link to the previous name, the creditor is defeated.
I’m not trying to imply that all no-med/no-op self-described trannys have other-than-honorable goals; however, “trans-truth” (that which is not truth purporting itself to be truth) is all too common.
” but in Virginia sealed name changes are often used to thwart collections activity”
Do you have a source for this contention? Because that’s not the law that the court cited. The court specifically stated that the applicant has to show cause that “a serious threat to the health or safety of the applicant or his immediate family would exist[.]”
Debt is not classified as a serious thread to the health or safety. Which means that if this is, in fact, common, then there is widespread misuse of the law in Virginia. Is that your well-sourced assertion?
I ask, not just because of the legal standard, but also because I tend to question the “honorable goals” of people who use the term “tr***y” in normal conversation.
There was no need for the court to go further in their explanation as the plaintiff was no longer an “applicant” for a name change and that excluded the individual from seeking the sealing.
Why should the court waste time exploring every possible ramification if the court were to violate the statute and grant the sealing of name change?
They are making sure they hit the alternative bases.
I haven’t had my coffee yet, but there are three separate grounds I saw.
First, it needed to be done by the applicant at the time of the request through the specified procedure.
Second, the court lacked jurisdiction over the final order after 21 days.
Third, regardless of the first two issues, even if there was some basis for sealing the records despite 1 and 2 (I dunno, some kind of extraordinary writ, tipsy coachman, blah blah blah whatever), there was a failure to meet the standard to seal the record.
The Dwyane Wade story recited by a certain windbag is post-facto BS. He moved in 2019, several years before any “anti LGBTXYZ” legislation was passed. Its just clout chasing from a retired athlete who still wants some media love.
I can see moral arguments to allow sealing of certain court orders and documents depending on the circumstance. Legally changing your name does not seem to be appropriate in any of them. Your legal name is a matter of public record. That’s inherent in being your “name”. Change it if you like but unless you’re in the witness protection program, there’s no reason to do that in secret.
I disagree, but there should be a very high standard.
There will be cases where the physical safety of the person might be implicated. In those rare cases, upon a proper showing (“serious threat”), it would be appropriate. That’s the rationale behind the legislative exception.
I do think that it would be inappropriate to do it post hoc, however, and based on nothing more than a generalized fear.
“Do you refer to Catholics as loons or mentally ill?” I don’t but the Rev. implies as much in many of his comments.
Are you implying that religious beliefs are a form of mental illness? Can you prove or disprove the transfiguration or the existence of God?
Do you believe you are a “Queen”?
Whoosh.
You have to be the absolute worst maker of analogies on the planet. This one is particularly stupid and shows a complete lack of familiarity with the people you’re describing.
Seriously Queenie, you should really stop showing your ignorance here. And of course Sarcastro thinks this is some sort of genius point. Holy hell.
Misstating religious faith to own the cons.
I responded to the first of yours, then I responded to the second of yours. Duh.
And consistent with your modus operandi, your response was totally devoid of substance. But you did manage a completely stupid and ineffectual insult.
In fact, that’s a good analogy.
If Catholics think that’s it’s helpful, for whatever reason, to say that in some sense communion wafers are the blood and body of Christ, they are welcome to do so. If others don’t feel it helpful to characterize them that way, that’s fine too.
But courts probably shouldn’t refer to them that way.
Now, if transubstantiation was a medically recognised condition, then we’d really be taking it up a level.
“Now, if transubstantiation was a medically recognised condition, then we’d really be taking it up a level.”
If transubstantiation were a medically recognized condition, that wouldn’t change anything about the nature of communion wafers, but it might change both our views of the medical establishment.
“I look forward to reading about the next court case which finds for the plaintiff alleging fraud on the part of the Church. ”
Not a big fan of the Free Exercise clause I see.
My substance was criticism of your awful analogy. Your substance was that I made consecutive posts. Which, BTW, you immediately yourself. That’s our Queenie, right? Zero self awareness.
Dilan does not mention Catholicism. He does not misstate what Catholics believe, in order to make some stupid political point or make them seem stupid. That’s why I didn’t argue with him. Unlike you he’s able to make a reasonable point without disparaging a group he doesn’t like.
I agree with you that calling trans people loons is incorrect and harsh and demeaning. But then, look at you, you just can’t help doing the same fucking thing to another group. Brett’s the kettle, you’re the pot.
And before you go down another rabbit hole, no, I’m not catholic.
‘that wouldn’t change anything about the nature of communion wafers,’
Not without actualising the cannibalism, no.
Isn’t the main problem with the analogy the fact that Catholics who believe as such admit that it’s magic? (Or “supernatural,” or a “miracle,” or whatever synonym one wants to use?) They’re not claiming that it’s actually a natural phenomenon that can happen without divine intervention. They’re not claiming that wafers can/do turn into flesh just because someone thinks that it’s true.
“natural brunettes feel like becoming and presenting as blondes”
Does the brunette believe she is a natural blond then?
“She believes she’s a blonde,”
Do you know any women? They actually don’t think their dyed hair changed color forever.
““natural” begs the question”
You used the term.
Got to say, no matter how revolting the anti-trans rhetoric becomes, none of actually justifies anything. In fact, as I’ve noticed before, the less there is to actually complain about, the louder and nastier the rhetoric becomes, all the more so if you’re hitching your political wagon to the persecution of a minority.
Replying to Queen:
Do the bottle blondes identify as dumb?
“They think they’re blondes now”
No they don’t. If they were blond they wouldn’t have to go back to the salon to have it done again. They know their hair is dyed.
Do you think women with purple hair likewise think they truly have purple hair?
Replying to Queen:
Do you think you’re a queen?
“Got to say, no matter how revolting the anti-trans rhetoric becomes, none of actually justifies anything.”
I’m puzzled about what you think it’s supposed to justify.
The only thing I think is justified her is refusing to humor people who are deluded about what sex they are, and certainly refraining from mandating that they be humored.
” If you, however, said “what blonde, I only see two brunettes!” he’d think you were being dumb.”
Does that apply if the “blonde” happens to be black?
Holy hell, it’s Queen, the Insult Comic Dog, without the comedy. No one is safe.
‘I’m puzzled about what you think it’s supposed to justify.’
It’s supposed to justify itself.
‘and certainly refraining from mandating that they be humored.’
Good news! The more you revile and persecute them, the more they will stand up for themselves and the more people will stand up for them, including legal protections, feeding your self-fulfilling justifications for reviling and persecuting them!