At an office in the West Village, a notary’s stamp lands on a stack of papers with a heavy “CA-CHUNK” and a cheer goes up.
Angel, a Brooklyn resident, is one step closer to having their name on their official New York ID.
“I’m glad it’s done. It feels like a relief,” Angel said.
Angel is one of several trans and non-binary New Yorkers who received assistance from Fordham Law School (FLS) students at a name and gender marker change event on Jan. 16. The event was organized by Fordham’s Advocates for Trans* Law Students (ATLS), which has assisted around 400 document change petitions at dozens of events since the club’s founding in 2022, according to ATLS President Alaina Greene, FLS ’27.
“It’s really intimidating to interact with the legal system as a trans person,” Greene said. “We wanted to bridge that gap and make it a bit more accessible.”
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) hosted the event on Thursday in order to bring the resources offered by ATLS to families with queer children.
At the events, FLS students provide printed-out copies of forms, help petitioners fill them out and certify them by a notary. Greene said that many ATLS volunteers have changed their own names or legal genders in the past, which helps them reassure petitioners and answer questions.
“People come in very anxious and I’m able to sit with them while they fill out the form and they leave say ‘okay, I know what room to go into at court, and I know my form is filled out correctly,’ you just feel their energy shift and by the end of it they walk out of there feeling confident in their documentation,” Greene said.
At Thursday’s event, Angel, who agreed to be quoted only by their first name in order to protect their privacy, said that they could not have completed the process without the assistance of ATLS volunteers.
“I would never be able to have the patience to sit down, look for the damn forms, look for the directions for the damn forms,” Angel said. “I must have had like 50 questions, that would have taken me five days.”
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) hosted the event on Thursday in order to bring the resources offered by ATLS to families with queer children, according to Clark Hamel, acting director of PFLAG NYC. Cindy and Matthew came to Thursday’s event to get assistance with their son’s name and gender marker change and agreed that ATLS volunteers helped them with the process.
“Since the election it’s been lines out the door sometimes, so many people asking for our support.” August Golden, FLS ’25
“I’m really grateful that they were here to help us. It is kind of daunting to navigate bureaucracy when you’re not sure where to start,” Cindy said. “To have a guide at an event with multiple people to be able to help you is fantastic.”
Cindy said she was relieved to have the notary’s stamp on the documentation for their son’s name and gender change because of concerns that it could become more difficult to obtain under the second Donald Trump administration.
“We’re happy to finally get it started, especially with the change in the political climate in the country. We were like, ‘we really have to do this now before it becomes impossible,’” Cindy said.
After Trump’s re-election in November, ATLS rapidly increased the number of name and gender marker change assistance events, eventually hosting 22 events in November, December and January, according to the club’s Instagram. Former ATLS President August Golden, FLS ’25, said that interest in the events skyrocketed after the election.
“After the 2024 election, things really exploded for us. We went from a couple people at our name change events here and there, there would be times when we would show up and be there and maybe one person would come. But since the election it’s been lines out the door sometimes, so many people asking for our support,” Golden said.
While New York has laws protecting the right for name and gender marker changes on state documents, Greene said that the ability to change information on federal documents such as passports could be restricted by anti-trans legislation. Another concern Greene raised is if a person with a non-binary X gender marker on their ID travels to a state where such gender markers are not recognized.
“It is an immediate identification that you are gender nonconforming,” Greene said. “We don’t know what the landscape is going to look like in a year so people are afraid that it could affect travel to less friendly states.”
Angel said that they are terrified of the prospect of being outed as non-binary during a traffic stop while visiting Florida, but they said they are nonetheless happy they took the opportunity to have their gender accurately reflected on their New York state ID.
“I reflected on if I didn’t have the ability to do this, would I be pissed that I didn’t do it? So I’m glad I did it,” Angel said.
Shortly after his inauguration on Jan. 20, President Trump signed an executive order defining sex as binary and unchanging once assigned at birth. The timeline for enforcement of the order is unclear. While the prospect of an anti-trans federal government is frightening, Hamel said that bureaucracy’s glacial pace offers a silver lining: any federal changes will not occur immediately.
“People are so terrified that I think they forget that it’s still bureaucracy, that if something were to come up that would affect for a New York state resident to change, let’s say, their gender marker on their passport, knowing that was coming down the line you would absolutely have enough time before it was actually enacted,” Hamel said.
Despite an uncertain and uneasy future for trans people, Golden said assisting fellow trans people using his experience as a law student makes him feel fulfilled.
“There’s so many moments of joy in these events, like every time we notary stamp someone everyone cheers and it’s very uplifting,” Golden said.
ATLS will continue to host name and gender marker change events multiple times a month in 2025 and has an annual fundraising event planned for the spring. The next events will be on Jan. 23 in Washington Heights and Jan. 26 in Crown Heights.
