When a Marion County judge approved Rhye Carroll’s request to change the gender marker on her birth certificate in October 2025, she said it felt like a weight had lifted. For her, as a transgender woman, it was the culmination of hard work — her legal documents would finally match who she is.
The case was sealed and closed.
Carroll celebrated and updated her Social Security record, passport, driver’s license and birth certificate over the next few months. She considered the matter a done deal and planned an overseas trip for this summer.
But Carroll learned the case was unexpectedly reopened. In April — six months after the Marion Superior Court issued the order — the court told her the judge granted a motion from the Indiana Attorney General’s office to intervene in the closed case and argue to reverse the order.
“Honestly, I don’t understand how a government entity has that right to even question a judge’s orders,” said Carroll, an Indianapolis resident. “I feel for every gender-diverse person in Indiana, because clearly this isn’t a safe place for us.”
For transgender Hoosiers who won court approval to change their birth certificates and other records, those orders may not be final. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita's office has been filing motions to undo them — intervening in closed, sometimes sealed cases in which the state was never a party, and in at least one instance a year after a judge ruled. The office submitted motions to intervene in seven gender marker change cases, the Indiana Lawyer reported in August 2025. Carroll's case is one of at least two additional interventions WFYI confirmed beyond those seven. Rokita's office did not respond to questions about how many interventions it has pursued or the outcomes of those cases.
The ACLU of Indiana is representing Carroll. Legal director Ken Falk declined to discuss specific cases, but said the attorney general’s office is convincing trial courts it has standing to reopen cases it was never a part of.
“What this entails is trying to convince the court that even though the attorney general’s office was not a party, they can, even though the case is closed, now try and get involved,” Falk said. “If the court were to grant that, then the attorney general would proceed to try and vacate the order to change the gender marker, arguing that it was not properly issued.”
The state recently began contesting changing a person’s gender marker on identification documents. For years after a 2014 Indiana Court of Appeals opinion, courts ordered the Indiana Department of Health and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to amend documents to reflect a person's gender change and the agencies complied.
But that changed after Gov. Mike Braun issued an executive order on sex and gender in March 2025. It directed Indiana's executive branch to enforce the "biological binary of man and woman" as state policy and defined sex as “an individual human being's immutable biological classification as either male or female.” The order set off a chain of actions in state agencies.
The health department and birth records
Ten days after Braun’s executive order, the state health department began forwarding requests for birth certificate gender changes to the attorney general's office.
IDOH State Registrar and Division Director Larry K. Ervin emailed local health departments to announce the state would no longer “process gender change requests for Indiana birth records.” He also directed local offices to continue sending the change requests to the state.
"Applications in process or received prior to the executive order will be submitted to the Indiana Office of the Attorney General for review,” the March 14, 2025 email read.
Previously, people who received a court order for the gender marker change could submit it to their local health departments as part of the process to update personal documents.
A spokesperson for the health department confirmed to WFYI that the policy remains in place.
The ACLU of Indiana sued the state over the change. The case was later dismissed.
The governor’s executive order also prompted the BMV to ban gender marker changes on driver's licenses and other identification cards. The rule change that took effect in February after a public review process that brought public pushback from transgender people and advocates, who warned the policy would forcibly out them in their daily lives and expose them to harm. The BMV told WFYI it no longer accepts court orders for gender marker changes.
Rokita’s intervention
Rokita announced in July 2025 he would seek to intervene in individual gender marker cases. He framed the changes to a birth certificate as “falsifying records.” His office said it had never been a party to any of the cases, but argued the state had an interest in protecting its birth certificate process, citing existing law and Braun's Executive Order 25-36. Rokita’s office said that trial courts had ordered the state health department to make such changes "in dozens of instances" — but did not say how many of those cases it had moved to reverse. At the time, the Indiana Lawyer reported seven.
The office did not respond to questions from WFYI seeking details about its effort to intervene in similar cases.
It’s unknown how many cases Rokita’s office has succeeded in reversing. In at least one reopened case, the judge did not reverse the order.The second case WFYI confirmed, in Hendricks County, was not sealed. A person filed a petition for a name and gender marker change there in November 2025. Judge Kathryn M. Kuehn approved it in January 2026 and ordered state agencies to update the person's records. The attorney general’s office entered the case April 21. Rokita and Deputy Attorney General John Oberdorf argued the judge lacked jurisdiction over state agencies to change the sex information listed on a birth certificate and that the order conflicted with Braun's executive order. The judge allowed the state into the case.
“An agency cannot change the birth certificate where Petitioner did not, and has not, challenged the Governor’s Executive Order,” Rokita’s office wrote.
In Kuehn’s amended order, issued May 15, she upheld the name and gender marker changes but added that state agencies must comply only "if it is their policy to do so after a court order authorizing such change is issued." In doing so, Kuehn acknowledged the practical reality: IDOH, she wrote, "may not honor this Court's Order" to change the gender marker on the birth certificate because of the governor's executive order.
In both cases, Carroll and the Hendricks County resident had submitted their court orders to update their birth records before Rokita’s office intervened.
Uncertain future
Carroll said that after she updated her identity documents, she and her partners invested time, resources and thousands of dollars into a trip overseas. But with her case reopened, she is unsure what will happen.
In her case, the judge scheduled a hearing for late May on Rokita's request to reverse the order on her gender marker change. Carroll feels it is “unreasonable” that over six months after her case was closed, she is forced to return to court.
She said she spoke to WFYI because she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.
“It’s just scary that it’s happening so close to home, and to me personally,” Carroll said. “This is what I have nightmares about. So for this to happen, it’s just terrifying, honestly.”
The ACLU of Indiana and the attorney general’s office are currently arguing a gender marker case before the Indiana Court of Appeals. The case is sealed from the public.
Contact WFYI data journalist Zak Cassel at zcassel@wfyi.org.
