TRANSGENDER people must be sterilized before they can legally change their gender, Japan’s supreme court has ruled.
The court acknowledged “doubts” were emerging over if the rule reflects social values, but said the law was constitutional.
Four justices unanimously voted on Thursday to reject an appeal filed by Takakito Usui, a trans man who wants to change the gender on his official documents, reported SBS News.
Usui was trying to revoke the law which states that people who want to change their gender in Japan must have “no reproductive glands or reproductive glands that have permanently lost function.”
Trans people must also have “a body which appears to have parts that resemble the genital organs of those of the opposite gender,” according to the 2003 law, which was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court judges.
Usui responded to the ruling by saying: “The essential thing should not be whether you have had an operation or not, but how you want to live as an individual.”