TOKYO — Japan’s Supreme Court will decide on Wednesday whether a law forcing transgender people to have their reproductive organs removed in order to officially change their gender is constitutional.
Currently, transgender people who want to change their biologically assigned sex on family records and other official documents must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and undergo surgery to remove their gonads.
International rights and medical groups have criticised the 2003 law as inhumane and outdated.
On Wednesday, the 15-judge Grand Bench of the Supreme Court will decide whether the much-criticised surgical requirement is constitutional. The case was brought by a plaintiff whose request to change her sex on the family register – from her biologically assigned male to female – was rejected by lower courts.
The plaintiff, who is identified only as a resident of western Japan, originally filed the request in 2000, saying the surgery requirement imposed an enormous economic and physical burden and violated the Constitution’s equal rights protections.
Rights groups and the LGBTQ+ community in Japan had hoped for a change in the law after a local family court, in an unprecedented ruling earlier this month, accepted a transgender man’s request to change gender without the compulsory surgery, saying the rule was unconstitutional.
The special law, which came into effect in 2004, states that people who want to register a sex change must have their original reproductive organs, including testes or ovaries, removed and have a body that “appears to have parts that resemble the genital organs” of the new sex they want to register with.
More than 10,000 Japanese have since officially changed their gender, according to court documents from the 11 October ruling that accepted Gen Suzuki’s request for a gender change without the required surgery.
Surgery to remove reproductive organs is not required in more than 40 of about 50 European and Central Asian countries that have laws allowing people to change their gender on official documents, the Shizuoka ruling said. The practice of changing one’s gender in this way has become mainstream in many places around the world, it noted.
Awareness of sexual diversity is growing in Japan, but change is slow and the country remains the only Group of Seven member that does not allow same-sex marriage or legal protections, including an effective anti-discrimination law. In a country where the pressure to conform is strong and productivity is emphasised by the conservative government, many LGBTQ+ people hide their sexuality for fear of prejudice at work, school or in the community.
Hundreds of municipalities now issue partnership certificates to same-sex couples to ease hurdles such as renting an apartment, but these are not legally binding.
In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled the current law constitutional in a separate case brought by a transgender man seeking to change his gender registration without the required sex-organ removal and sterilisation surgery.
In this ruling, the Supreme Court said that the law was constitutional because it aimed to reduce confusion in families and society, although it acknowledged that it restricted freedom and could become out of step with changing social values and should be reviewed later.