Japan court rules mandatory sterilisation of people officially changing gender unconstitutional

A law requiring transgender people in Japan to undergo sterilisation surgery in order to officially change their gender is unconstitutional, the country’s supreme court has ruled.

The decision by the top court’s 15-judge grand bench was its first on the constitutionality of Japan’s 2003 law requiring the removal of reproductive organs for a state-recognised gender change, a practice long criticised by international rights and medical groups.

The case was filed by a plaintiff whose request for a gender change in her family registry – to female from assigned male at birth – was rejected by lower courts.

The decision comes at a time of heightened awareness of issues surrounding LGBTQ+ people in Japan. Activists have increased efforts to pass an anti-discrimination law since a former aide to the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said in February that he would not want to live next to LGBTQ+ people and that citizens would flee Japan if same-sex marriage were allowed.

But changes have come slowly and Japan remains the only member of the G7 group of the world’s largest industrialised economies that does not allow same-sex marriage or legal protections, including an effective anti-discrimination law.