The European Union’s highest court is requiring that member states allow transgender citizens to update their names and gender markers on official identification documents.
The court challenged a 2023 Bulgarian Supreme Court decision which ruled against “change of the data regarding the sex, name, and uniform civil status in the acts of civil status of an applicant who claims to be transgender.”
ILGA-Europe, Trans Europe, and Central Asia brought the case forward on behalf of a Bulgarian trans woman who is currently receiving hormone therapy in Italy. When she requested to update her Bulgarian ID documents she was continuously denied that right.
In a press release, the groups representing her said “Because her life in Italy also depended on her Bulgarian documents, the lack of documents reflecting her lived gender creates an obstacle to her right to move and reside within EU member states.” The Court of Justice of the European Union found that the ban violated the right to “freedom of movement” between EU countries guaranteed by the European Commission. According to LGBTQ Nation the court ruled that the “right to freedom of movement supersedes any member country’s laws.”
“The discrepancy between a person’s lived gender identity and the gender data appearing on his or her identity card is such as to hinder the exercise of his or her right to freedom of movement,” the court wrote.
“Today, the EU Court of Justice has taken an important step towards a right to legal gender recognition in the EU,” TGEU Senior Policy Officer Richard Kohler told the Washington Blade. “Member states must allow their nationals living in another member state to change their gender data in public registries and identity cards to ensure they can fully enjoy their freedom of movement. National laws or courts cannot stand in their way.”
