The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday blocked a bid by a transgender woman to change her legal gender without an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
The court said the ruling against the plaintiff, identified as “Vivi,” was in line with previous Supreme Administrative Court opinions regarding changes to ID cards.
However, the court also ordered the plaintiff’s Household Registration Office to reconsider her application to change her gender on her ID card, arguing that a 2008 Ministry of the Interior directive cited by officials for the rejection was unconstitutional.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights via CNA
The Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, which provided pro bono support for Vivi, said that while not unexpected, the ruling presented uplifting as well as disappointing aspects.
On the one hand, the ruling reaffirmed that judicial agencies believe a requirement for gender-affirming surgery is unnecessary and reduced the required medical documentation to a single diagnosis of gender dysphoria, said Victoria Hsu (許秀雯), an attorney and cofounder of the alliance.
On the other hand, the court still insisted on framing gender identification in medical terms with the need for a doctor’s endorsement, Hsu added.
A news release by the alliance said that Vivi was calm when she heard about the ruling, although she expressed discomfort that the court still saw gender identification as a “diagnosis.”
Vivi said that unlike previous cases, she had purposefully not sought a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria when she applied to change her ID card.
Instead, she sought to prove that “social evidence” — such as letters from her mother and friends, photographs of her daily life and counseling records — was sufficient to legally change gender, she said.
At oral arguments last month, Vivi said she hoped to present diversity within the transgender community with her test case.
The alliance has argued that medical diagnoses should no longer be a requirement for changing one’s legal gender, with the WHO officially depathologizing being transgender in 2022.
Alliance president Neil Pan (潘天慶), an attorney, interpreted the Supreme Administrative Court’s opinion differently from the High Administrative Court, saying that it centered on “stable gender identity” as well as “proportionality” for requirements on ID change.
Vivi applied to change the gender on her ID card in April last year.
When her application was rejected and her administrative appeal against the rejection denied, she took the matter to court with the help of the alliance.
Currently, household registration agencies follow a 2008 Ministry of the Interior directive requiring applicants seeking to change their ID to provide proof that they have undergone gender-affirming surgery, as well as two separate diagnoses of gender dysphoria.
In the past few years, several people who had not undergone surgery had challenged and won against the administrative agencies.
However, in all these cases, they were still required to present two separate diagnoses of gender dysphoria.
Vivi and the alliance wanted to push the cause further and open up more possibilities for transgender people to receive official recognition through her case.
The alliance said it would appeal the ruling and keep fighting for social evidence to be accepted as grounds for changing one’s legal gender.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS