Supreme Court issues guidelines on sex change applications

The Supreme Court of Justice has formulated a set of non-binding guidelines to be used by judges in hearing applications for the modification of identity papers following gender transition, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Court said in a press release that the recommendations have been made for the purpose of creating a unitary and just case law, considering that such applications represent a novel category of cases, and the existent applicable legislation is vague. The guidelines come after two transgender persons complained in a domestic court about the refusal of the Civil Registration Service to register their new identities. The Supreme Court is recommending courts to protect “persons of homosexual and transgender orientation” by respecting their right to private and family life. “The right to change one's gender and first name is a component of one's private life”, the Court confirmed. Arguing that homosexual and transgender persons must enjoy protection under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Supreme Court cites a relevant judgment pronounced by the Strasbourg Court, which states that: “It must also be recognised that serious interference with private life can arise where the state of domestic law conflicts with an important aspect of personal identity (…) The stress and alienation arising from a discordance between the position in society assumed by a post-operative transsexual and the status imposed by law which refuses to recognise the change of gender cannot, in the Court's view, be regarded as a minor inconvenience arising from a formality”. In the same judgment, the European Court states that Article 8 of the Convention gives protection to the personal sphere of each individual, including the right to establish details of their identity as individual human beings.