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The latest in an ongoing legal battle could affect transgender people in AZ

An ongoing federal legal battle over the rights of three transgender Arizona children will now impact the broader transgender community in the state.

In 2020, three families with transgender children filed a lawsuit challenging an Arizona law that requires a person to prove they’ve had what it calls a “sex change operation” in order to change their gender on their birth certificates.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Tucson granted the plaintiffs class certification. That means the judge’s eventual ruling could benefit all transgender people born in Arizona.

According to the National Center for Lesbian Rights — which helped file the initial case nearly three years ago — transgender people risk discrimination and even harm when required to produce birth certificates that don’t match their gender identity.

Kirsten Dorman is a field correspondent at KJZZ. Born and raised in New Jersey, Dorman fell in love with audio storytelling as a freshman at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2019.