A Japanese high court on July 10 approved the legal gender change for a transgender woman without undergoing genital surgery in a rare decision.  

The petitioner, who was assigned male at birth but identifies as female, has sought to change her legally registered gender without changing the appearance of genitalia.  

The decision comes following the landmark Supreme Court’ ruling last October which demanded to reexamine the case, as requiring the removal of a person’s reproductive organs to change their registered gender was “unconstitutional.” 

The Hiroshima High Court, which was told by the top court to reexamine the gender affirmation surgery clause, said that the body parts of the petitioner were already “feminized.”  The high court said the current provision “is suspected of being unconstitutional” because it  “imposes excessive restrictions” that forces a person to choose between undergoing gender affirmation surgery or giving up on changing their legally registered gender.  

The petitioner, a transgender woman living in western Japan who has disclosed her age as under 50, said through her lawyer that she was happy to be freed from the difficulties she had been facing from the disparity between her legal gender and the gender she identifies with, since she was little.