AP, Garçon and Nicot v France (Application Nos. 79885/12, 52471/13, 52596/13)

In brief

The European Court of Human Rights held that France’s requirement that applicants for legal gender recognition demonstrate the irreversible nature of their gender transition — a requirement effectively necessitating sterilisation — violated Article 8 of the Convention. The Court found that conditioning the exercise of the right to respect for private life on the renunciation of the right to physical integrity was incompatible with Article 8. The decision is the leading ECHR authority on the bodily-integrity proportionality limit.

Key provisions

• Article 8 ECHR — no sterilisation precondition for legal recognition : Conditioning legal gender recognition on irreversible sterilisation breaches Article 8.

When relevant

Our analogy, not the Court’s holding: when evaluating policy that conditions internal recognition (HR records, ID cards, customer accounts) on disproportionate medical or surgical evidence. The judgment itself concerns only State civil-status procedure (paras 99–101); it found a violation only for the sterilising-treatment condition (para 135) and none for a diagnosis requirement or a court-ordered expert examination (paras 143–144, 150–154). When considering bodily-integrity proportionality.