Czech Republic: Constitutional Court rejects the claim of “third sex”

In order to continue to provide citizens with impartiality and credibility, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic refused to interfere in the country’s cultural and political debate, or to exceed its competencies. Rather, it stuck to its mandate, even though the issue in question is one that may affect the intimate and family lives of Czech citizens.

Namely, the court dismissed the complaint of a person, born male, who would like a change to be made to his personal identification number, replacing the digits detecting male sex with the indication of a “neutral” gender, since such a person identifies as “non-binary.”

The personal identification number in Czech birth certificate is a 10-digit code that is also present on all identity documents and indicates the person’s year, month and date of birth and also carries four additional numbers to distinguish between several people born on the same day. For males, the numbers indicating the month of birth range from 1 to 12, while for females they range from 61 to 72.

“The Constitutional Court,” Judge Milada Tomková explained, “is not authorized to change the binary conception of sex in the Czech Republic either in social or legal terms.” In other words, there is no recognition of a “third,” non-binary or neutral sex whatsoever in the country’s legal system, and it is not the Court’s job to introduce it.

In fact, “The Court maintains that any recognition of a third sex or non-binary gender must come from legislation and social debate, and not from the courts.”

In addition, “the right asserted by the complainant does not reflect the established practice of the European Court of Human Rights, which has previously dealt with the merits of several lawsuits,” the judges added.

However, the Czech parliament is already active on the LGBT+ rights side, for example, with regard to the establishment of same-sex “marriage,” as iFamNews also recently recounted, meaning that it would not be too surprising if it also took up these other demands in due course.