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European Convention on Human Rights-respect for private life-right to marry-legal status of transsexuals-effect of judicial precedent-evolution of human rights standards
GOODWIN v. UNITED KINGDOM. App. No. 28957/95. At <http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Judgments.htm>.
European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, July 11, 2002.
I. v. UNITED KINGDOM. App. No. 25680/94. At <http://www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Judgments.htm>.
European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, July 11, 2002.
Under English law, people may change their names and use those new names for official purposes. At the same time, specified biological criteria determine the sex of individuals under the law for various purposes, including marriage and retirement pensions. In Goodwin v. United Kingdom1 and I. v. United Kingdom,2 the question presented was whether such biological criteria impermissibly operate to the prejudice of postoperative transsexuals. The grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights unanimously concluded that the practice of restricting gender in national law to the one registered at birth infringed both the right to respect for private life and the right to marry, contrary to the guarantees of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.3
In Goodwin the applicant claimed that she was disadvantaged in various ways-for example, relating to marriage, the eligibility for pensions, and the criminal justice system-because of the United Kingdom's failure to recognize legally the realigned sex of postoperative transsexuals. The case of I. v. United Kingdom presented similar claims.4
Christine Goodwin, born in 1937, is a postoperative male-to-female transsexual. She was diagnosed as transsexual in the mid-1960s, followed a prolonged process of treatment and surgery, and, in 1990, underwent gender-reassignment surgery that was provided and paid for by the National Health Service (a public authority). She was divorced from her wife but maintained contact with their children. Following the operation, she unsuccessfully claimed sexual harassment in the workplace and was dismissed from employment: both events, she claimed, resulted from being regarded as male. Upon commencing new employment, she was concerned that her National Insurance number (issued on the basis of one's birth certificate) would reveal her birth gender, thereby causing her personal distress and creating new problems. There were also legal questions concerning her pension. Although women in the United Kingdom are eligible for a state pension at the age of sixty, men must...