Transgender candidate in Ohio is disqualified for not revealing his birth name

A transgender woman was disqualified from a race for the Ohio House of Representatives after failing to include her previous name in election materials, raising the prospect that transgender candidates would face similar barriers elsewhere.

Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer running as a Democrat in Ohio’s 50th District, was notified in a letter Tuesday from the Stark County Board of Elections that she had been disqualified from the race for the state House.

The board mentioned a state law that requires anyone running for office to list any name changes on the candidacy application within five years of the election, and Ms. Joy was given until Friday afternoon to appeal.

Ms. Joy, who hopes to be one of the first openly transgender elected officials in Ohio, said in an interview that she had appealed the board’s decision and planned to challenge the law in court.

“If I had known this law existed, I probably would have taken the plunge and put my dead name next to my legal name,” she said, using a term for a transgender person’s birth name.

“I would have done it because I care enough to get on the ballot, but this will be a huge barrier to entry for transgender people,” she said, adding that many transgender people have had their birth names sealed out of concern for their safety.

Ms. Joy noted in her appeal letter that Ohio’s candidate guide made no mention of the law and that the county elections board had raised no concerns when it submitted the dozens of signatures needed to secure a spot on the ballot.

She also argued that the law had been “unequally applied.” According to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a national organization that supports LGBTQ candidates, at least two other transgender candidates will appear on the ballots in Ohio this year despite not having a first name listed on their election papers. The organization said it was not clear whether these candidates had changed their names in the past five years.

Ms. Joy, 42, grew up in a conservative Christian household. She came out as transgender two years ago after the death of her father, who she said would have disapproved of her decision to transition. She also left her job at the family’s production company to work as a photographer.

She said she chose to announce her transition on social media and in a podcast because Republicans have proposed a wave of measures nationwide to limit medical care for transgender people, regulate which public restrooms they can use and dictating which youth sports teams they can play on.

“Republicans have an absolute supermajority in Ohio, and I want to give other people my age the courage to come out and vote,” she said. “If they see a trans girl in red Ohio running for office, maybe they’ll say, well, I can do it too.”

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who focuses on voting rights, said Ohio’s statute had a practical purpose.

“The reason you want to know a candidate’s first names is if he or she has something in their past that they’re trying to hide, like a criminal history or some embarrassing incidents,” he said. “Voters want to be able to assess backgrounds.”

However, in the history of voting rights in the United States, many laws that seemed neutral had the effect of being exclusionary, says Atiba Ellis, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

“In Ohio’s anti-transgender political climate, this disqualification raises the specter of this becoming a new exclusionary mechanism,” he said.

Melanie Amato, a spokeswoman for the Ohio secretary of state, said the office was aware of the disqualification.

“The law applies to everyone and there is no discussion about having this law changed at this time,” Ms. Amato said in an email.

A record number of transgender candidates sought and won office last year, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024, according to Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.

Mr. Meloy said there is no accounting of how many states had laws like Ohio’s that could pose a barrier to such candidates.

According to a database from the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, there were no known openly transgender lawmakers in the United States in 2017. At least 14 transgender people are serving in state legislatures this year.