In a notable development from Bulgaria, a court has approved the legal change of gender and names for two transgender individuals, offering a potential new path for gender recognition in a country where it was recently all but halted.
This comes just over a year after Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation issued a ruling in 2023 that effectively created a blanket ban on legal gender recognition, leaving many trans people in a state of legal limbo. That decision closed the door on the existing administrative procedures for changing official documents.
The recent positive rulings, supported by the local LGBTQ+ organization Deystvie, were not based on a change in Bulgarian national law, but rather on the supremacy of European Union law. The court's decisions align with a key judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
EU Law Creates an Opening
Specifically, the court referenced the CJEU's decision in the landmark Shipova case. That ruling established that an EU member state cannot refuse to recognize a gender and name change based solely on its own national laws, as doing so infringes upon an EU citizen's fundamental right to free movement. This principle is now being used to challenge the national-level ban on a case-by-case basis.
While two individuals received positive outcomes, the court simultaneously rejected a third, similar application. The stated reason for the denial was that the expert medical report provided in the case did not include what the court considered an "unequivocal diagnosis of transsexuality."
These divergent rulings underscore the complex legal battle for transgender rights in Bulgaria. While the application of EU law provides a crucial avenue for progress, the path to full and consistent legal gender recognition remains uncertain and dependent on individual court decisions.
