Nayarit last week became the third state in Mexico to allow modifications to birth certificates for gender identity reasons, acknowledging the right to legal equality for transgender people.

The modification to the state's civil code was supported by 23 members of the local Congress; one voted against it and five abstained.

The reform will allow transgender people to request a change to a birth certificate at civil registry and municipal offices. The new law also stipulates that no civil registry judge will be able to deny requests for reasons of conscience.

"...the request for gender identity change becomes an administrative procedure... bypassing procedures that questioned the identity of trans people and violated their human rights," said the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), one of the proponents of the legal reform.

That party's national secretary for sexual diversity remarked that the modified law represents significant progress for a sector of the population that has been historically discriminated against and excluded from benefits granted by the Mexican state to the rest of society.

Michoacán approved a similar set of modifications to its civil code earlier this month, making it the second state to do so. Mexico City made the changes three years ago. Since then, close to 2,000 birth certificates have been modified.

"We're not only talking about an acknowledgement under civil law, we're talking about the opportunity to simplify their lives in order to obtain job and educational opportunities with nothing standing in the way of completing a legal procedure," said Manuel Granados Covarrubias, legal advisor to the Mexico City government.

The procedure is available to all Mexican citizens and not just those who live in the capital, he said.

Over the last three years, for example, 150 requests were filed by citizens from Estado de México, 130 from Veracruz and 70 from Jalisco.