Information Note on the Court’s case-law 259
February 2022
Y v. Poland - 74131/14
Judgment 17.2.2022 [Section I]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Transgender person unable to obtain a full birth certificate without gender reassignment reference, while its short extract and new ID documents indicate only reassigned gender: no violation
Facts – The applicant is a transgender person, who has undergone gender reassignment and has been legally recognised as male. The short extract of his birth certificate indicates only his new name and reassigned gender. However, his full birth certificate includes a marginal annotation about the gender reassignment. The applicant was issued with new identity documents. He was later lawfully married and continues to live in society as a male person. The applicant brought unsuccessful proceedings to remove the annotation and subsequently, to be issued with a new birth certificate as done in the event of adoption of a child.
Law – Article 8 : The question to be determined in the present case was whether respect for the applicant’s private life and/or family life entailed a positive obligation on the respondent State to provide an effective and accessible procedure allowing the applicant to obtain a birth certificate without any reference to the gender assigned at birth.
In nearly all everyday situations the applicant was able to establish his identity by means of identification documents or the short extract of the birth certificate which indicated only his new name and reassigned gender. The Court acknowledged the applicant’s feelings that the marginal annotation was demeaning and caused him mental suffering. However, it did not appear that in his daily life he was required to reveal these intimate details of his private life and that the inconveniences complained of were sufficiently serious. Furthermore, full birth records were not publicly accessible; only a limited number of persons and entities could access the register of births and obtain full copies of birth certificates. In addition, the applicant himself would seldom be required to provide a full copy of the birth certificate. In this connection, the Court was mindful of the historical nature of the birth record system and that, in view of the public interest, reference to the gender assigned at birth, might, in certain situations, be necessary to prove certain facts predating the sex reassignment, even though this could cause the person concerned to experience some distress.
Notwithstanding all the above considerations, the applicant had not demonstrated that he had suffered any sufficiently serious negative consequences or difficulties resulting from the fact that the sex assigned at birth was still visible in the form of an annotation on his full birth certificate. He had failed to provide any details that he had been affected by that situation and to what extent. Any potential risk of adverse consequences was not capable of rendering the current Polish system deficient from the point of view of the State’s positive obligation.
In conclusion, given the particular circumstances of the present case, the Court accepted that the Polish authorities had struck a fair balance between the different interests at stake, while remaining within the wide margin of appreciation available to them.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
The Court also found, unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 8 as the applicant could not claim to be in the same situation with adopted children, who were issued a new birth certificate in the event of full adoption.
(See Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom [GC], 28957/95, 11 July 2002, Legal Summary; Hämäläinen v. Finland [GC], 37359/09, 16 July 2014, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes