European Union member states must allow transgender citizens to update their names and gender markers on identification documents, according to the EU’s highest court.

On Thursday, the EU Court of Justice (COJ) ruled that member state Bulgaria’s ban on trans people updating their names and gender markers on birth certificates — established in 2023 with a Bulgarian Supreme Court decision — violates the right to “freedom of movement” between EU countries guaranteed by the European Commission. All EU citizens’ right to freedom of movement supersedes any member country’s laws, the court said.

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The decision came in a case brought by ILGA-Europe, Trans Europe and Central Asia, and two Bulgarian LGBTQ+ rights groups on behalf of a Bulgarian trans woman who currently lives in Italy, where she’s begun hormone therapy. Her requests to update her Bulgarian ID documents, however, have been denied.

As the groups representing the woman explained in a press release, “Because her life in Italy also depended on her Bulgarian documents, the lack of documents reflecting her lived gender creates an obstacle to her right to move and reside within EU member states.”

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“This mismatch between her gender identity and expression and her gender marker in her official documents leads to discrimination in all areas of life where official documents are required. This includes everyday activities such as going to the doctor and paying for groceries by card, finding employment, enrolling in education, or obtaining housing,” the release continued. 

The COJ agreed, ruling that “EU law precludes legislation of a Member State which does not permit the amendment of the gender data in the civil status registers of one of its nationals who has exercised his or her right to move and reside freely in another Member State.”

“The discrepancy between a person’s lived gender identity and the gender data appearing on his or her identity card is such as to hinder the exercise of his or her right to freedom of movement,” the court noted on March 12.

Such a restriction violates the right to respect for private life guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which, the court said, “protects gender identity and obliges Member States to provide for clear, accessible and effective procedures for the legal recognition of it.”

“Today, the EU Court of Justice has taken an important step towards a right to legal gender recognition in the EU,” TGEU Senior Policy Officer Richard Köhler said in a statement, reported by the Washington Blade. “Member states must allow their nationals living in another member state to change their gender data in public registries and identity cards to ensure they can fully enjoy their freedom of movement. National laws or courts cannot stand in their way.” 

As The Telegraph notes, the COJ decision applies to all 27 EU member states, including Hungary, which also banned trans people from correcting their official documents in 2020.  

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