Court backs trans woman's ID card gender change without surgeries

Taipei, Aug. 26 (CNA) A transgender woman's application to change the gender on her identification card in 2020, which was rejected, is lawful and should be allowed without the need for legally required gender-affirming surgery, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled Monday.

In ruling in favor of the transgender woman, identified only by her surname "Wu" (吳), the court ordered the household registration office to accept her application and proceed with the legal gender change.

The ruling can be appealed.

In a statement issued Monday, the court said Wu should be able to change her legal gender shown on her ID card to female because her application included legally required documents, including a United States passport.

Wu, who has dual Taiwan-U.S. nationality, presented two hospital diagnoses of gender dysphoria and a U.S. passport showing her as female when she applied for ID card change to the Zhongzheng District Household Registration Office in Taipei on Nov. 20, 2020, the court said.

The office rejected her application based on the lack of a diagnosis confirming that she had a gender-affirming operation, as required under the Ministry of the Interior's 2008 directive that lists such a diagnosis as a "necessary document," the court said.

It decided not to apply the 2008 directive, it said, because the directive turns the medical records of individuals undergoing a highly invasive procedure into the only documents deemed necessary to affirm a gender change on an ID card.

That puts an added burden not stipulated in existing laws on the individual and violates the proportionality doctrine in the Constitution, the court said.

Although the Constitutional Court decided in 2023 not to hear Wu's case, the administrative court said it was still in the position to determine whether the 2008 directive was constitutional.

Citing a 2021 ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court as the standard in reviewing gender-change applications, Monday's ruling said the fact that Wu has been living her life as a woman since 2017 met one of the criteria.

In addition, the diagnoses she obtained under the court's request from two different hospitals both stated that the confirmation of her legal gender as a woman would help ease symptoms she experienced because of gender dysphoria, the court said in justifying its ruling.