A.P., Garçon and Nicot v. France

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 206 April 2017 A.P., Garçon and Nicot v. France - 79885/12, 52471/13 and 52596/13 Judgment 6.4.2017 [Section V] Article 8 Positive obligations Article 8-1 Respect for private life Legal requirements for rectification of civil status for transgender persons: violation, no violations Facts – The applicants are transgender persons. Between 2007 and 2009 they applied to the domestic courts to have amended the entries on their birth certificates indicating their sex and first names. The courts generally dismissed their actions on the grounds that they had not shown that they had undergone the necessary medical and surgical treatment to bring about irreversible gender reassignment. In the second applicant’s case, the courts also held that it had not been established that he actually suffered from the gender identity disorder in question. In the first applicant’s case, the court attached particular importance to the fact that he had refused to undergo a medical examination to confirm that gender reassignment surgery had genuinely been carried out; the examination had been ordered on the grounds that the evidence submitted by him was insufficient. In 2012 and 2013 the Court of Cassation rejected their appeals on points of law. Before the European Court, the applicants complained that these conditions (which arose from the law then in force) were in breach of private life or were degrading. Law – Article 8: The Court...