A participant poses for a photograph during the International Transgender Day of Visibility rally in Shibuya district of Tokyo on March 31.//AFP
Tokyo, Japan – Japan’s top court said on Wednesday that obliging transgender people to be sterilised in order to change their legal gender was unconstitutional.
But the claim from a transgender woman at the centre of the case against having to undergo gender affirmation surgery will be sent back to a lower court for further deliberation, the court said.
The sterilisation rule “restricts a person’s free rights not to have their bodies invaded against their will,” the supreme court said in the keenly awaited decision that partially overturned its own earlier 2019 ruling.
The requirement imposes a “cruel choice” on those who wish to change gender between “embracing the sterilisation surgery that requires an intense level of…
