Japan Court Drops Key Legal Hurdle for Transgender PeopleRuling Against Gender Appearance Requirement Advances Right to Legal Recognition
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/29/japan-court-drops-key-legal-hurdle-for-transgender-people 🔗Human Rights Watch - Kanae Doi
September 29, 2025 4:45PM EDT
A court in Japan has ruled that the legal requirement that transgender people alter the appearance of their genitals to change their legal gender is unconstitutional. The September 19 ruling of the Sapporo Family Court in Hokkaido prefecture adds to the nationwide momentum to respect trans people's fundamental right to legal recognition.
Since 2004, transgender people in Japan who wanted to legally change their gender needed to apply to a family court. Under the Gender Identity Disorder Special Cases Act, applicants must undergo a psychiatric evaluation, be surgically sterilized, and "have a physical form that is endowed with genitalia that closely resemble the physical form of an alternative gender."
In a 2023 case before the Supreme Court, ... [t]he 15 justices ruled unanimously that "being forced to undergo sterilization surgery ... constitutes a significant constraint on freedom from invasive procedures" in violation of Japan's Constitution.
In 2024, the Hiroshima High Court ruled that mandating surgery for the appearance requirement in legal gender cases could be unconstitutional. The court held that hormone treatment could satisfy the requirement.
The recent Sapporo ruling affirms that requiring trans people to use hormones to change the appearance of their genitals also violates constitutional protections.-------------------
This was only the twelfth time in modern Japanese history that the Supreme Court had found a law unconstitutional.
