A transgender woman had taken legal action, refusing to undergo surgery to be legally registered as a woman. In the country, this is part of the conditions for formalizing one’s gender transition in civil status, under a law adopted in 2003.
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It was a highly anticipated decision. The Japanese Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional on Wednesday, October 25, the fact of requiring transgender people to be sterilized in order to be able to change their sex in civil registers. She considers that this obligation generates “serious restrictions” on a person’s life and “limits the free right not to suffer against one’s will an attack on one’s body”.
Since a 2003 law in Japan, a transgender person must meet a certain number of conditions to formalize their gender transition before the family court: having undergone sexual reassignment surgery, proving the absence of reproductive capacity, being single, have no minor children and be officially diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria, that is, distress caused by a mismatch between the sex assigned at birth and the gender with which a person identifies person.
The Court already seized in 2019
The Japanese Supreme Court was seized following a legal action launched by a transgender woman seeking to be legally registered as a woman without undergoing surgery, on the grounds that compulsory sterilization constitutes a “serious violation of human rights and is unconstitutional”.
This is the second time that the country’s highest court has had to rule on this issue: in 2019, it upheld the law, ruling that it aimed to prevent “problems“in parent-child relationships that can lead to “confusion“and”sudden changes” within society. The Supreme Court, however, added that the legislation should be reviewed regularly as social and family values evolve.
Four years later, despite the step towards protecting the transgender community that the country’s highest court has just taken, LGBT+ rights defenders are outraged by the long, invasive and potentially risky medical procedures that Japan is forcing. As a reminder, it is the only G7 country not to recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions at the national level.