Having regard to: the applications against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (“the UK”) lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by the applicants listed in the appended table (“the applicants”), on the date indicated therein; the decision not to have the applicants’ names disclosed;
Having deliberated, decides as follows
The issue in the present case is whether the requirement under English
law to register a transgender man who has given birth as the “mother” of the child on the child’s birth certificate (“the registration requirement”) breached the applicants’ rights under Article 8 of the Convention and/or Article 14 of the Convention read with Article 8.
. . .
As part of its judgment the Court of Appeal had regard to Article 3.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, which provides that, in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. The court found that Parliament, in enacting a carefully crafted set of provisions balancing the rights of transgender people and others, including their children, took into account the best interests of children as a primary consideration. Parliament had taken the view that every child should have a mother and should be able to discover who their mother was, because that was in the child’s best interests.
. . .
The Court considers, in the circumstances, that the domestic authorities struck a fair balance between the competing interests of the individual and the community in the present case. The applicants’ complaints under Article 8 of the Convention are therefore manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected as inadmissible pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
Source: Feminist Legal Clinic – Advancing the Human Rights of Women & Girls