While States Crack Down, Courts Affirm That We Exist. Rights in Retrograde, vol. 6

During this quarter, rulings from constitutional and supreme courts have not only interpreted existing legal frameworks but actively shaped the possibilities—and limits—of bodily autonomy, legal recognition, and family formation. While developments from the U.S. and the U.K. Supreme Courts have received significant airtime, these rulings, which limit trans people’s rights, are in fact out of step with a gradual global trend toward courts affirming expansive understandings of gender identity. During this period, courts also stood up for diverse families.

Two Steps Back: When Courts Enable Regression

In April, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that the words “sex,” “woman,” and “man” in the Equality Act mean biological sex, biological woman, and biological man, respectively. They do not include “certificated sex.” The Court determined that trans people facing discrimination can only rely on the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” available under the Equality Act. The decision not only narrows anti-discrimination protections but also opens the door to limitations on access to single-sex spaces and services. This decision reflects a deepening judicial alignment with anti-trans narratives, undercutting hard-won rights under the guise of legal neutrality.

The United States followed a similarly regressive path. In June, the Supreme Court delivered one of the most consequential rulings for trans people’s health and lives in recent years by upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The 6–3 decision, which found no constitutional violation under the Equal Protection Clause, is expected to legitimize similar bans in over two dozen states. The ruling marks a legal endorsement of restricting access to essential health care based on gender identity.

Courts Holding the Line: Inclusion in a Time of Pushback

Other courts, however, have served as engines of progress. The following cases, though varied in scope and impact, reflect judicial efforts to uphold inclusion and safeguard fundamental rights.

Asia

In India, a series of rulings between May and June have reinforced and expanded protections for queer and trans people. The Supreme Court ordered a review of discriminatory blood donation policies that exclude transgender individuals and men who have sex with men, urging alignment with human rights standards. The Madras High Court addressed the petition of a 25-year-old lesbian “detained by her natal family.” In ruling that the woman’s natal family violated her autonomy by effectively kidnapping her to prevent her from living with her same-sex partner, the court found that same-sex couples can constitute families even without formal marriage, advancing a broader understanding of kinship and legal recognition.

The High Court of Andhra Pradesh, also in India, affirmed in a landmark decision that trans women are women under a Penal Code provision that provides for criminal penalties for the “husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty.” The petitioner, a trans woman, had filed a domestic violence complaint against her husband, who had responded by claiming she was not a “woman” and was not entitled to domestic violence protections. The court, in its ruling, found that “denying trans women legal recognition as women amounts to discrimination.”

Additionally, the Calcutta High Court issued an order requiring the Regional Passport Office to take into account a woman’s transgender identity card as a valid basis to obtain a passport that accurately reflected her gender. Together, these decisions consolidate a growing body of jurisprudence that affirms legal personhood, recognition, and dignity for queer families and gender-diverse individuals in one of the world’s largest democracies.

Americas

In Brazil, the Supreme Federal Court affirmed a petitioner’s right to a gender-neutral identity in official documents, and a lower court recognized a trans man who gave birth as the legal father of his child, and a trans woman as the legal mother, overturning a civil registry’s refusal and reinforcing the right to trans parenthood. 

A U.S. federal court in Puerto Rico ordered the inclusion of nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates, strengthening constitutional guarantees on gender identity. The court found “no rational basis for the classification between binary and nonbinary individuals created by the Birth Certificate Policy,” ruling that the existing policy, which allowed people to change their gender marker on birth certificates from female to male or vice versa but provided no option for an X marker, “violates the Equal Protection Clause.”

A court in London has upheld a Cayman Islands law legalising same-sex civil partnerships. And in a welcome step toward dignity and inclusion, a High Court judgment in Trinidad and Tobago included the use of a trans respondent’s self-identified pronouns throughout the ruling—despite the country lacking a legal gender recognition framework.

In April 2025, Argentina’s Federal Court of Paraná (No. 2) ruled that President Milei’s decree banning gender-affirming care for minors was unconstitutional in the specific case before the court. While the ruling does not overturn the decree nationwide, it reaffirms the protections enshrined in the 2012 Gender Identity Law and sets an important legal precedent in defense of young trans people’s access to medical transition.

Europe

A wave of rulings in European states bolstered the recognition of diverse families. In a landmark move in April, Lithuania’s Constitutional Court declared the absence of same-sex partnerships in the country’s civil code unconstitutional, creating a legal imperative for future legislation recognizing such unions. In May, an Italian court ruled in favor of a lesbian couple’s right to be jointly recognized as mothers on their child’s birth certificate—a significant win amid mounting pressure from conservative political forces. The Hungarian Supreme Court ruled on June 4 that same-sex marriages performed abroad must be recognized domestically as registered partnerships, and gave parliament until October 31 to codify the decision into law. In Ukraine, on July 3, Kyiv's Desniansky District Court formally recognized a same-sex couple as a family, marking the first legal precedent of its kind in the country.