Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday signed a measure that adds a “gender” field to Colorado death certificates.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at kunc.org.
The change will be in place by Jan. 1. Supporters say the law creates a space on forms to recognize an individual’s lived experience and aligns death certificates with other state records.
“People in Colorado deserve to be recognized in death as they lived their life,” state Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat and a sponsor of the legislation, said during its debate.
House Bill 1109, establishes three options for gender: male, female or nonbinary. Coroners, funeral directors and others who fill out death certificates will be required to use the gender identity of the deceased.
Death records will continue to include a separate category for “sex,” the place where the deceased’s biological sex has long been recorded. Lawmakers from both parties agreed that biological sex is important information, especially for medical researchers, and should be recorded.
But often the sex that’s recorded on death certificates is at odds with gender identity. A 2022 review of 51 trans and nonbinary people’s death records in Portland, Ore., found that more than half had been misgendered. Trans women were marked as “male” nearly two-thirds of the time.
California and New York allow people to be identified as nonbinary on death certificates, but most states don’t. Republicans argued the legislation is a “deception” and a violation of First Amendment rights. They also warned it could make Colorado a target of the Trump administration, which has insisted “there are only two genders” and those are entirely determined by biological sex.
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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