Vital Records Rights:

Vital records are official documents maintained by government authorities like birth certificates, drivers’ licenses, and Social Security cards. This page provides the tools you need so these documents can reflect and respect your unique identity, including through name and gender marker changes.

While the federal government has put policies in place to prevent updating the gender marker on your federal documents, like Social Security records and passports, advocates are challenging these policies. Additionally, Illinois protects the right to self-select your gender marker on Illinois ID documents, including state IDs, driver’s licenses, Real IDs, and birth certificates. You can change your name on all state and federal documents with a court order.

The resources on this page provide information and resources for people seeking to change their name or gender marker on identification  documents. There are also resources available to answer your questions about your ID documents and to links to organizations that provide assistance with updating  identification documents.