Published on 10 November 2025
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 19280/24
Noam GILBERT
against the Czech Republic
lodged on 27 June 2024
communicated on 20 October 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the requirement of sex reassignment surgery as a statutory condition for changing the personal details denoting gender in the civil status records, and the authorities’ refusal – endorsed by the Constitutional Court despite its conclusion that the above requirement was contrary to the Convention – to grant the applicant’s request for such a change on the grounds that he had not undergone that surgery.
The applicant, who, at birth, had been entered in the civil status records as female, identifies himself as male. In 2019, he unsuccessfully asked the administrative authorities to change his name from a neutral to a male form, and to change his sex/gender marker and his numerical personal code (birth number). His subsequent administrative action was dismissed on the grounds that he had not fulfilled the legal conditions for those changes, namely he had not proved to have undergone a sex reassignment surgery, which was at the time required by Article 29 (1) of the Civil Code and section 21 (1) of Law no. 373/2011 on Specific Health Services.
The applicant lodged a constitutional appeal, seeking also a constitutional review of the above-mentioned domestic law provisions. In its plenary judgment no. Pl. ÚS 52/23 of 24 April 2024, referring inter alia to the Court’s case-law, the Constitutional Court reviewed the legislation on legal gender recognition – specifically the requirement to undergo surgery involving genital reconstruction and disabling of the reproductive function – and considered that it amounted to a significant interference with the bodily integrity of trans people and with their right to self-determination and personal autonomy. It further held that it was disproportionate to the pursued aim of ensuring legal certainty by preventing arbitrary or purposeful gender changes, and that the same aim could be achieved by less severe means. Consequently, the plenary of the Constitutional Court decided to annul the first sentence of Article 29 § 1 of the Civil Code and the first sentence of section 21(1) of the Specific Health Services Act, but suspended the enforceability of that annulment until 30 June 2025, in order to provide the legislature with sufficient time to adopt new legal regulations on gender recognition.
On 22 May 2024 (no. I. ÚS 2776/23), the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional appeal as manifestly ill-founded. Referring to the above-mentioned plenary judgment, the Constitutional Court stated that at the time of examination of the applicant’s matter the relevant provisions laying down legal conditions for gender recognition had been in force and had to be followed by the authorities. The applicant was invited to wait until 30 June 2025 when the sex reassignment surgery would no longer be required.
Before the Court, the applicant submits that the legislation on legal gender recognition as still in force at the time of lodging his application amounted to a degrading treatment prohibited by Article 3 of the Convention, and that the Constitutional Court’s dismissal of his constitutional appeal prolonged his suffering.
Relying on Article 8 of the Convention, the applicant asserts that he is continuously forced to reveal that he is a transgender person, which disregards his right to respect for his private life. He further complains that the impugned legislation forces him to undergo surgical sterilisation and prevents him from bearing the male form of his mother’s family name, thereby breaching his right to respect for his family life.
Under Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, the applicant complains that the above situation which repeatedly forces him to involuntary coming outs amounts to a discrimination based on his gender identity.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the respondent State’s refusal to grant the applicant’s request to change his name, the sex/gender marker and the numerical personal code (birth number), on the grounds that the applicant had not undergone an irreversible surgery entailing sterilisation, amounted to a violation of either Article 3 and/or Article 8 of the Convention, taken alone or in conjunction with Article 14 (compare, mutatis mutandis, with A.P., Garçon and Nicot v. France, nos. 79885/12 and 2 others, 6 April 2017 (extracts), and T.H. v. the Czech Republic, no. 33037/22, 12 June 2025)?
2. Has the applicant suffered discrimination in the enjoyment of his Convention rights on account of being a transgender person, contrary to Article 14 of the Convention read in conjunction with Articles 3 and 8?