I have been interviewed by several reporters in the past month or so, one with the university paper and two reporters from with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune regarding my name and gender change difficulties with the university. I put together the website also to keep the press up on everything to this point.
You mentioned at our last meeting that from what you had found so far didn’t appear as though it was discrimination, but simply that the university lacked familiarity with these issues. Here are the two cases I could think of that might be stretched to say that common law name change is no longer valid in California or that it would present a burden for them in their record keeping.
The two cases are In Re Richie 15 Cal.App.3d 1070 or 206 Cal.Rptr.238 (1984) and Lee v. Ventura County Superior Court 9 Cal.App.4th 510 or 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 763 (1992). Both cases revolved around people trying to change their name by way of a court procedure and not common law alone, and in both cases they were denied the change, one based on the roman numeral “III” not being considered a “name” by the courts, and the other someone trying to change their surname to “Nigger” and it was denied because the courts saw it as morally offensive.
There are other possible details worth mentioning in these cases, that might also be stretched or magnified to be used as a rationale for someone not recognizing a common law name change, but when considering such details in the light of the cases which followed these, the opinion of the state attorney general about the “nexus” or face-value conceptual leap, and all of the federal cases that have not been overturned, the state statues saying common law name changes are legal and the legislation and codes forbidding gender discrimination, it is a very fine of line to walk.
For instance, several wordings from In Re Richie might be argued as suggesting that common law name changes are no longer valid: “[The] purpose of statutory name change is simply to have, where possible, the change recorded.” A reading of this line, particularly the line “where possible” might suggest to the reader that since California does have a statutory procedure for changing one’s name, that this case then truly eliminates the validity of common law name changes in California, that because a statutory procedure does exist, that all name changes are now to be officially recorded by the courts for the sake of keeping records. And as a name like “Olympia” is a rather normal, non-offensive “name” that I should take the route of obtaining a court issued name change, since it is “possible.” Also the wording, “At common law, [a] person’s name consisted of a given name and a surname or family name.” Here the use of the word “consisted” is in the past tense, as if the common law no longer exists, or as if it is something no longer followed. So, one might conclude from these that common law name changes are no longer valid.
One major difficulty with these reasonings is that if one looks at the procedure of “statutory name change” and follows it precisely, it essentially says that has the if one is not on a prisoner of the state, on probation, on parol, or been a convicted sex offender, one may choose to change their name by common law (Code Civ. Proc. § 1279.5). Perhaps then one should re-read the “purpose ... where possible” as not being a solid requirement that all should seek to obtain a court issued name change, but merely a deduced reason for the existence of the statutory procedure itself.
And contrary to “consisted” being in the past tense, when one looks at many other cases and at state statutes, the common law appears to be alive and well, including as one jumps forward to 1992 in Lee v. Ventura County Superior Court. As mentioned, someone wanted to change their last name to “Nigger.” In this case it reads: “Appellant has the common law right to use whatever name he chooses. He may conduct whatever social experiment he chooses. However, he has no statutory right to require the State of California to participate herein.” In this case the common law is alive and functioning. As such, clearly one may operate their life however they choose and the wording “has no statutory right to require” pronounces that the statutes spelling out that a court issued name change is possible, but they do not require a person to necessarily obtain one as might be concluded from In Re Richie. When or if one chooses to go through a court issued name change, clearly it is up to the person. And certainly the state is acting out of what it considers moral.
In our time, approximately fifteen years from the Lee case, laws have been passed that it is moral for the state to honor someone’s self-determination of gender. But also, in our time, does the common law now no longer exist? --- If one examines the two relatively recent federal cases I quoted in my third letter to the university (Abdul-Jabbar v. General Motors Corporation, 85 F.3rd 407 (1996) and Touchton v. Dover Corp./Rotary Lift Div., 319 F.Supp2d 1290 (2004), and the relatively recent opinion of the attorney general, it appears that it still is as valid as in the Lee case and as such, the “where possible” and the “consisted” should perhaps be taken as either an affirmation to seek to follow § 1279.5 to its full extent, or perhaps it is merely an anomalous blip in the vast array of law since the U.S. and California Constitutions and Lindon v. First National Bank, 10 F. 894 in 1882 (one of the very earliest common law name change cases) which have been either affirmed and/or not overturned.
Okay, I think that’s a good brief analysis.
Talk to you soon,
Olympia