by Joan Blagg

Last week, the ACLU and the ACLU of Alaska filed suit against the State of Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles over the DMV’s refusal to put the correct gender marker on a transgender woman’s driver’s license without proof of a surgical sex change. DMV based its decision on Alaska’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) D-24.  Just who wrote SOP D-24, and what kind of review did it get before being used to make decisions affecting people’s lives?

Editor’s note: Per the brief in K.L. v. State of Alaska, which can be read at the ACLU or ACLU of Alaska websites, SOP D-24 was not promulgated in accordance with Alaska’s Administrative Procedures Act, A.S. 44.62; a hearing officer found that “the Division has no authority to change the sex on a license until such time that a regulation is adopted that complies with the Administrative Procedure Act.”

So, the ACLU is filing suit against the State of Alaska because a transgender woman cannot get her gender marker corrected on her driving license. Curiously enough, I know all about this particular policy of the Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles. I too have run into the DMV’s Standard Operating Procedure D-24. You have no idea how much grief that little “M” attached to my name causes, especially with credit card transactions, government agencies, and air travel. It would please me greatly to have it changed so that my identification matches my appearance and people’s expectations, without the requirement of drastically shortening my lifespan.

However, there is a larger question here. Bigger than the one that afffects the trans community. Exactly who writes these “internal Standard Operating Procedures”, where are they visible, and who reviews them? Most of them are not on the Internet along with the other laws, regulations, and codes that affect our daily lives. I am rapidly discovering that some nameless somebody hidden in the bowels of a government office makes a decision that affects people’s lives and then just writes down what they think is the right idea. It is then implemented by government staff as if it were gospel from on high.

Now, there is a reasonable level of this. I could care less about SOP for using the state copier, or SOP for turning out the office lights at night. These are truly internal to a department’s operation. Affecting people’s lives is not “internal”. Making a Standard Operating Procedure for treating people, especially when those people are of a given class or type, is entirely another story.

It is, in my opinion, profiling. Just the same as police profiling, no different. You have to be checked out / treated differently / singled out because your looks / race / clothing / haircut / smell / actions fit a pattern “we” don’t call normal. You are one of “them”, and so we will put you through the process. That is exactly what this “internal Standard Operating Procedure D-24” does. Profile transgender people.

And maybe you as well, reader. Like I said there is something larger here. How many of these SOPs are there in the state government? Who do they affect? How would you know? You cannot see them. Nobody tells you they exist.

You there, ever not get a permit for something? Maybe there is an SOP that says you don’t get one but your neighbor does. Hey, did you not get the occupational license you were looking for? Maybe there is an SOP that says there are too many licenses where you live. Ever had to pay fees that maybe you didn’t need to pay? Ever think that there might be an SOP for that?

The government of the Soviet Union was famous for hiding arbitrary rules by burying them in masses of administrative “Standard Operating Procedures” that nobody was allowed to read. Maybe you *can* see it’s legacy from your house.