Gender-neutral birth certificate fight reaches Sask. courts

Three Saskatchewan families continue to battle for equality for their transgender and non-gender identifying children.

Fran Forsberg went to the Human Rights Commission requesting that gender be taken off Saskatchewan birth certificates and other identification.

But four years later she is still waiting for a decision.

So now she, and two others, have filed a statement of claims requesting the Court of Queen’s Bench step in to address the issue.

“This government needs to take responsibility for this, they need to move on it now, it needs to be settled. It does not need to be dragged on and there is no reason for it to do so,” Forsberg argued outside of court.

The legal arguments being made before Justice Jennifer Pritchard are complex and cover issues of the procedures of the commission.

Forsberg is frustrated that these issues don’t address the emotional torture many transgender kids are living with every day.

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, their jargon, what I do understand and what I see myself is that children are taking their own lives,” Forsberg said.

That’s a sentiment echoed by Megan Cheesbrough, another parent in the lawsuit.

“The arguments that we think are so clear and emotional and necessary are really being hung up on matters of procedures,” Cheesbrough who’s nine-year-old son, Noah, was born a girl. “He went from being a child who wouldn’t smile to a child who launched himself on the bed to hug us and wake up in the morning.”

By removing the gender qualification on identification, Forsberg, Cheesbrough and others like them hope it will go some way to help remove the stigma, questions and bullying that their children go through every day.

The court will reserve the decision.