Woman asked to prove she’s female to get driver’s license

Woman asked to prove she’s female to get driver’s license

A 37-year-old Georgia woman whose birth certificate mistakenly labeled her as male had to jump through some major hoops to get her driver's license renewed.

Fox 5 Atlanta spoke with Nakia Grimes of Clayton County about her odyssey to get the typo cleared up. Grimes said she never really had occasion to look closely at her birth certificate, so she never noticed the mistake.

"You only look at the name, the date and the year," Grimes told Fox 5. "I've never seen that."

The woman working at Georgia's Department of Vital Records did notice and came to Grimes with an unusual request. "She said I needed to go have a PAP exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you're a woman and bring it back notarized," Grimes explained to Fox 5. That was something Grimes said she was unwilling to do. Instead she reached out to the station for help.

A reporter from Fox 5 spoke to Georgia's Vital Records department on Grimes' behalf. The director of the agency said she would look into the incident.

The matter was cleared up once state authorities examined the birth certificate of Grimes' son. The document listed Grimes as the mother, which cleared up any confusion about whether or not she was really female.

Earlier this year, a computer glitch at Pennsylvania's Division of Vital Records resulted in about 500 birth certificates listing the wrong fathers.