"It threatens legitimizing same-sex weddings," says the Sofia Court of Cassation.
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| Bulgaria prohibits gender reassignment on papers for transgender people |
Transgender persons in Bulgaria will no longer be able to change their gender on their documents, even after surgery. This was founded by a Sofia Supreme Court decision.
Before today, the legislation did not clearly allow for altering the gender on official papers issued by the Bulgarian administration, but it also did not officially prohibit it. Some courts have viewed this vacuum as a green light for transgender persons to request and undergo gender reassignment, as long as it is allowed by a court and is based on surgery. The Court has now closed this gap.
Bulgaria has received repeated cautions from the European Court of Human Rights over the years, owing to the lack of a clear regulation on the subject. The Bulgarian Constitutional Court concluded two years ago that gender is determined at birth and cannot be altered. Based on this line, the cassation judges stressed that such an important passage affects not only the individual in question but also his family, such as children. As a result, they feel that legalizing it risks granting a priori legitimacy to homosexual marriage or admitting that a child be reared by same-sex parents, both of which are legally undesirable. In accordance with Bulgarian legislation.