Through Stop the Hate, California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) represented a client who was publicly outed as transgender and doxxed on social media in 2023. The post exposed private information, and the client received relentless transphobic harassment from anonymous users. CRLA helped her petition the court to seal records connected to her name and gender marker correction case.
After a trial court denied the request to seal the full record, CRLA helped the client appeal. The California Court of Appeal reversed the decision and ruled that all records revealing the client’s name and gender marker correction should be sealed. The case protected the client’s privacy and created precedent for transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive people seeking protection of private information in legal cases.
The decision helped inspire SB 59, which was signed into law Oct. 13, 2025. The law makes name and gender marker change records confidential beginning July 1, 2026, and allows previously filed records to be made confidential upon request. CRLA and partners also created an SB 59 Confidentiality Request Toolkit to support self-represented petitioners.
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