Czech Republic

Same-sex relations are legal in the Czech Republic, and same-sex couples may enter into joint partnerships. According to a 2023 poll, a significant majority of Czechs support the rights of LGBTI+ people, such as the right to marriage. A same-sex marriage bill passed its first reading in the Chamber of Deputies in June 2023. However, it was rejected at third reading in February 2024 in favor of a bill expanding the rights of registered partnerships that entered into force on January 1, 2025. The partnership status confers all the rights and obligations associated with marriage and holds almost the same legal recognition as marriage, with the exception of joint adoptions.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited by law. However, discrimination persists. A 2022 report found that 43 percent of its respondents had been discriminated against or harassed in the five preceding years.

In February 2023, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, while discussing Czechia’s history of sterilizing Romani people, urged the government to abolish the sterilization requirement for the legal gender recognition of transgender people. In March of the same year, Czechia accepted several recommendations during the UN Universal Periodic Review to abolish the sterilization requirement, but only noted recommendations to enact legal gender recognition on the basis of self-determination. Finally, in May 2024, the Czech Constitutional Court repealed the regulation that mandated the sterilization requirement, calling it a severe violation of human rights. Lawmakers in Czechia now have until mid-2025 to update legislation to reflect the ruling.

*Outright research indicates that the bodily autonomy of intersex people is not respected and protected in this country.