On October 10, 2011, the Gender Nondiscrimination Act and Vital Statistics Modernization Act passed in California, making important additions to California’s nondiscrimination laws and ensuring that medical professionals, not the judiciary, are the final arbiters of gender reassignment.  Though transgendered people are protected under California’s current nondiscrimination laws, the lack of specificity in the law made it hard for people to understand their rights and difficult to enforce.  Since the Gender Nondiscrimination Act has been enacted, there is now a specific category for “gender identity and expression” in the existing law against discrimination.  The Vital Statistics Modernization Act has taken the process of updating one’s gender on a legal ID form from the bureaucracy and scrutiny of the judicial process that accompanies something like a name change and put it more firmly in the realm of the person seeking the change and their physician.  All the court must do now is verify that someone is going through treatment rather than actually deciding if the person had undergone “clinically appropriate treatment” in order to grant the petition.