Court strikes down required sterilization for transgender people

Changing the name or gender on a government-issued document like a driver’s license has long included a frightening step for transgender people in almost two dozen European countries: mandatory sterilization.

But those days may be coming to an end. Gay and transgender activists in Europe have argued for years that the sterilization requirement was an institutionalized violation of human rights, and last week the European Court of Human Rights agreed.

On April 6, it issued a ruling in favor of three transgender people in France who had been barred from changing the names and genders on their birth certificates because they had not been sterilized. In so doing, activists said, the court set a new legal standard that calls for changes to laws in 22 countries under its jurisdiction.

“This decision ends the dark chapter of state-induced sterilization in Europe,” Julia Ehrt, the executive director of Transgender Europe, an advocacy group based in Berlin, said in a statement. “The 22 states in which a sterilization is still mandatory will have to swiftly end this practice.”

The European Court of Human Rights, in the French city of Strasbourg, ruled that the sterilization requirement was a violation of Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

The case was filed by three French citizens, identified in the ruling as Émile Garçon, Stéphane Nicot and by the initials A.P., and the decision is legally binding only in France, where the issue has already been settled by legislative action: Last October it did away with the sterilization requirement and adopted revised procedures for legally changing a name and gender. But the ruling set a new legal standard for all 47 countries that have signed the European Convention, many of which did not require sterilization in the first place and some of which — like Russia and Turkey — are not members of the European Union.

According to Transgender Europe, the countries that require sterilization are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.

The ruling does not mean immediate legal change in any of the countries, and none of them has so far changed their laws. The court does not possess a strong enforcement mechanism that can make lawmakers pass new legislation, and activists cautioned that it may take several more court cases before legal change comes to individual countries.