The European Court of Human Rights has today ruled that UK law violates the rights of transsexual people. In the judgment on Goodwin and I v UK, the Court ruled that article 8 (the right to private and family life) and article 12 (the right to marry) have been violated. Ms Goodwin was represented by Bindmans solicitors.

Liberty intervened in this case, which principally concerned the rights of transsexual people to have their new gender recognised (summary below). After almost 50 years of case judgments in the UK and the ECHR that have failed to protect transsexual people's rights, this marks a historic breakthrough. .

Liberty's intervention comprised a comparative review of the legal status of transsexuals in different countries throughout the world. This review clearly showed that Britain lagged behind the rest of Europe in particular (with the exceptions of Ireland, Andorra and Albania) in its treatment of transsexuals, in ways that discriminate by forcing this intensely private information into the public domain without a clear necessity.

Joanne Sawyer, who led the intervention, described the judgment as "excellent news and is the most significant case for transsexual people's rights so far.

"We hope that the Government will now take steps immediately to change the law, to protect the rights of transsexual people".
The applicants, both United Kingdom nationals, are post-operative male to female transsexuals.

Christine Goodwin, born in 1937, had problems and faced sexual harassment at work during and following her gender re-assignment. Most recently, she experienced difficulties concerning her national insurance (NI) contributions. As legally she is still a man, she has to continue to pay NI contributions until the age of 65, not 60. She has had to make special arrangements to pay her NI contributions directly herself to avoid questions being raised by her employers about the anomaly.

She also alleges that the fact that she keeps the same NI number has meant that her employer has been able to discover that she previously worked for them under another name and gender, with resulting embarrassment and humiliation.

I., who used to work as a dental nurse, claims that she was unable to obtain admittance to a nursing course, as she refused to present her birth certificate.

The applicants both complained about the lack of legal recognition of their post-operative sex and about the legal status of transsexuals in the United Kingdom. They complained, in particular, about their treatment in relation to employment, social security and pensions and their inability to marry either as a man or a woman.

Both relied on Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life), 12 (right to marry and to found a family) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention. Ms Goodwin also relies on Article 13 (right to an effective remedy). The hearing was in March.

Recently, Dame Elisabeth Butler Sloss was critical in the Court of Appeal of the Government's lack of progress, in her judgment of the Bellinger marriage case (denying the validity of a transsexual's marriage; October 2001), and one of the other two judges hearing that case issued a dissenting view that the appeal should have been upheld (confirming the Bellinger marriage as valid).

Butler Sloss ruled that it was a matter upon which Parliament, not the judiciary, should act to change the law. Britain, Ireland, Albania and Andorra remain the oinly countries in Europe which have not recognised the changed official status of trans people. Even in strongly Catholic cultures such as Italy this issue was resolved years ago.

A 2000 report from a Government interdepartmental working group on transsexual people identified three options for the future: no change; issuing birth certificates showing the name and possibly the new gender; or granting full legal recognition of the new gender subject to certain criteria.

Following the Goodwin ruling, the debate should now shift to a consideration of the quickest and fairest way to implement the ruling, to eliminate existing anomalies.

This means establishing a full mechanism for correcting the name and gender details of transsexual people, both in terms of identifying documents etc and in terms of their legal status. The latter includes not only social provisions such as benefit / pension rights, criminal law, and commercial situations (eg insurance and pensions), but also the issue of marriage.

The leading campaign group in this field, Press for Change, have already presented the Working Group with proposals for how a new system could work.