But What Did They Used to Call You?

When Hazel Williams began the legal process of changing her gender marker and name last year, she stumbled across something that shocked her: such changes are part of the public record. If you’re looking for someone’s current name on your county’s Superior Court website, you can search for their former name and find it — and vice versa. Outside sites, like BeenVerified, aggregate court data, and as it spreads across the web, these records can pop up in Google searches.

Having such information easily available on the internet has never been without complication; everyone deserves privacy. But as trans people's lives become increasingly surveilled and restricted under the second Trump administration, having these files sealed has become a critical matter of safety. Such records, in the wrong hands, can be used to out people in the workplace, deny them healthcare, ban them from playing sports, and make them walking targets for harassment.