Hungary can’t demand proof of gender assignment to correct an Iranian refugee’s gender status, the European Union’s top court ruled today.
The Court of Justice ruled on a case brought by an Iranian transgender man, born as a woman and named only as VP, who obtained refugee status in Hungary in 2014 as a transgender person, supplying proof with medical certificates. Hungary accepted him as a refugee but listed him as female in the asylum register.
VP tried to rectify this using EU data protection law, which gives people the right to correct inaccurate information about them. Hungary had rejected this request, saying it wasn’t supplied with proof of gender reassignment surgery.
The court confirmed VP’s right to rectify personal data on gender identity, saying that a “Member State may under no circumstances, by administrative practice, make the exercise of that right subject to the production of evidence of sex reassignment surgery.”
“Such an administrative practice undermines the essence of fundamental rights … in particular, the essence of the right to the integrity of the person and the right to respect for private life,” it said.
Gender identity is “one of the most intimate aspects” of private life, it said, adding that transgender people have a right to “personal development and to physical and moral integrity, as well as to respect for and recognition of their gender identity.”
“Given the particular importance of this right, States enjoy only a limited margin of appreciation in this area,” it said.
Hungary does not legally recognize transgender identity. However, the court added that a member country “cannot rely on the absence, in its national law, of a procedure for the legal recognition of transgender identity in order to limit the exercise of the right to rectification.”
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, has been a vocal critic of LGBTQ+ rights. He recently banned the Pride march in Budapest and has passed an anti-LGBTQ+ law that experts say breaches human rights.
EU judges rule on points of EU law, leaving final decisions on this dispute with the Hungarian courts. The court has used initials for people in cases since 2018.
The case is C-247/23 Deldits.
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