Alexandra Glover of Denham Springs, LA needed to update her drivers license. That's not a fun thing to do for anyone, but it was worse for Alexandra. You see, Alexandra is transgender and she lives in Louisiana.

Transgender advocates say Louisiana is one in a minority of states that are behind when it comes to accommodating transgender and gender non-conforming people in ID laws. Recent efforts by transgender people in South Carolina and West Virginia have helped to change driver’s license practices in those states.

After being denied at a couple of OMV offices, Alexandra's friend thought she should document a visit with video.

You can’t present as a woman if you’re listed as a man.

If you have makeup on or anything like that you’re supposed to take all that off, because you are actually a man.

--OMV worker

Louisiana has these "policies."

Louisiana’s OMV photo policy, adopted in 1986, says: “At no time will an applicant be photographed when it is obvious he/she is misrepresenting his/her gender and/or purposely alternating his/her appearance in an effort which would ‘misguide/misrepresent’ his/her identity.”

The rule “actually (puts) up a barrier that makes the identification document less useful, because it doesn’t actually match what she looks like.

--Alison Gill, Human Rights Campaign

A lot of trans people feel like they were misrepresenting themselves before transition. So there’s no misrepresentation or attempts to misguide when trans people are just trying to get a picture that accurately reflects their identification.

--Corrine Green, Louisiana Trans Advocates

Glover was not asking to have her gender marker changed. If she wanted to do that in Louisiana, she would have had to have a doctor certify that she had undergone sex reassignment surgery.

That's an inappropriately high standard.

Not all transgender people desire any particular type of medical intervention, or intervention at all

--Gill

If you are thinking this is, after all, Louisiana we are concerned with, you should know that fifteen states have similarly restrictive policies and four others have unclear guidelines.

The US passport policy does not demand that surgery be completed.

Requiring proof of surgery is a very outdated standard for updating a gender marker. Surgery is not needed by everyone, not affordable for everyone, not always covered by insurance, not always medically possible for everybody.

--Arli Christian, National Center for Transgender Equality

OMV Commissioner Stephen Campbell says he thought Louisiana's policies were quite up-to-date.

It’s biological. You pick one or the other. We believe that’s not stereotyping someone, not placing someone into a category other than what they biologically are.

--Campbell

Campbell says the issue of gender on an ID card or license also a matter of safety on the roads, citing, for example, EMS being able to identify a deceased crash victim based on driving record information.

However Glover said the way she looked at the OMV is how she looks daily, so removing a dress and make-up, as the clerk suggested her do to be considered a man, would've indeed made her look different from the photo on her ID if she were involved in an accident.

You should look like what you look like on your ID.

I don’t plan on getting my gender changed or my sex changed on my ID. I’m still 21. If I get to that place in my life where I feel like I want to make that type of decision, that’s fine.

I just wanted to wear my makeup, for Pete’s sake.

--Glover, adding that she considers herself female

Campbell later told the Advocate that the policy was being reviewed.

It has brought to light that we may not be up-to-date, and we are in the process as we speak — and I mean it, right now — revising our policy. We will in all likelihood revise our policy within the next 24 hours. … And we will contact the individual who feels that he was wronged and will attempt to make it right.

--Campbell

Later Wednesday, he walked that back:

Later Wednesday, after this reporter tweeted about his comments, Campbell called to say his office is merely “reviewing” the policy, and that there’s no guarantee it will be changed.