Japanese parents cannot change registered sex: top court
© AFP/IllustrationTOKYO (AFP) - The Supreme Court rejected a plea by Masami Osako, a 51-year-old born as a biological male who has gender identity disorder, to change her family registry entry to describe herself as a female, her lawyer said.
Osako, of the western city of Amagasaki, lived as a married man and fathered a child before getting divorced and undergoing a sex change operation.
A similar plea by Sayaka Morimura, 41, of Ikoma, near the western city of Nara, has also been turned down by the court, her lawyer said.
The pleas had earlier been rejected by local courts.
The two had sought to amend a law that allows people with gender identity disorder to change their sex in registers if they are 20 years old or older, unmarried and childless and no longer have functioning reproductive organs of their former genders.
"If a gender change is approved for a person with a child, it may disrupt order in the family and cause problems with regard to the child's welfare," the Supreme Court ruled, according to the lawyers.
"The law does not lack rationality or contravene the constitutional right to equality."
In July 2004, Japan introduced a law that allows people to register under a different sex after sex change operations.
The law was meant to eliminate embarrassment and discrimination against Japanese who have changed sex. They had earlier been obliged to present birth records that showed them to be of a different gender when they sought jobs or housing.
©AFP