Joe Maldanado is 8. He recently joined the Secaucus Cub Scouts Pack 87. He was eagerly looking forward to camping trips and science projects.

Then his mother received a phone call from a Scouting official. Joe was banished.

Kristie Maldonado said she was stunned because her son had been a member of Cub Scout Pack 87 in Secaucus for about a month and his transgender status had not been a secret. But some parents complained, an official from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts told her — even though her son had been living as a boy for more than a year and was accepted as a boy at school, she said

Not one of the kids said, 'You don’t belong here."

It made me mad. I had a sad face, but I wasn’t crying. I’m way more angry than sad. My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It’s right to do.

--Joe

Joe's case could be the first time someone has been barred from participating in Scouting because of transgender identity, said members of the LGBT community. And it comes as the Boy Scouts of America appeared to be emerging from a period of turmoil involving sexual-orientation issues, reversing long-standing bans against gay Scouts and gay Scouting leaders over the past few years. Those policy changes were made amid an internal debate that saw at least one local council defy national Scouting decrees by hiring a gay camp counselor and pressure brought from corporations that withheld donations from the organization.

The Scouts declined to say whether they have a written transgender policy. Effie Delimarkos, the communications director for the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement that the organization’s Cub Scouts programs are for boys age 7 to 10 and that "the classification on the participant’s birth certificate” would be used to “confirm legal status.” She did not provide additional details and did not specify whether the Boy Scouts have ever examined gender statuses on birth certificates.

Eric Chamberlin, an executive with the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts, based in Oakland, acknowledged calling Kristie Maldonado last month but declined further comment, referring questions to Scouting’s national office and saying the issue involved "our membership standards."

The national office had no comment.

No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation. Gender identity isn’t related to sexual orientation.

The Boy Scouts decline to directly address the situation in Secaucus or say whether local or state Scouting leaders had consulted the national office about the matter.

--Delimarkos

The Boy Scouts of America is not known to have rejected any Scouts over gender identity before the Secaucus case, said Justin Wilson, the executive director of Scouts for Equality. His group advocated for Scouting to reverse its bans against gay people. He said that he does not know of any instances in which the Scouts asked for a birth certificate as as condition of membership.

Wilson said he knows of at least two transgender boys who are Cub Scouts about the same age as Joe, one in a southern state that he did not name and the other in New York. He said he did not want to be more specific because of concerns that the national organization might take steps against them. The use of birth certificates to determine gender identity, he said, would be “a new, unfair arbitrary standard” for membership.

New Jersey is one of more than 20 states that require either surgery or another medical procedure before the state will change a person's gender on a birth certificate, a stricter requirement than most surrounding states.

Four states (Idaho, Kansas, Tennessee, and Ohio) don't allow change of gender on a birth certificate under any circumstances.

Joe plays on a recreational boys basketball team with some of the children who were in his Cub Scout pack. His teachers have referred to him by male pronouns since the second grade. Kristie Maldonado said he is a “much happier child” since he was allowed to live as a boy.

How dare they judge me? I don’t have to explain it [his gender identity]. It’s the way I’m born.

--Joe

Mrs. Maldonado said she was asked whether she would "testify” that her son was a boy. She asked how the official would know her son was born a girl. He told her, she said, that he heard about it when “some mothers called.” The official did not ask for a birth certificate, she said.