“A story about the lack of courage of politicians.” How the court decided to end the castration of trans people

On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court issued a landmark verdict regarding the life of trans people in the Czech Republic. From the end of June next year, they will not have to undergo surgery and castration for an official sex change. What does the decision of the Constitutional Court mean in practice?

What will you also hear in today’s 5:59 episode?

Trans people will no longer have to undergo mandatory surgery in the Czech Republic in order to officially change their gender. In the end, however, it was not politicians who helped them, but constitutional judges. According to the deputy editor-in-chief of the Respekt weekly Andrey Procházková based their verdict on three fundamental arguments.

“First of all, it was about the fact that surgery is automatically forced on everyone. This is problematic because individual cases are not assessed, the stories of people who would like to change their official gender, and at that moment it is actually excessively discriminatory,” says the journalist and trained lawyer in the 5:59 podcast.

Judge reporter Jaromír Jirsa even said after announcing the decision that the court “paused” on how it is possible that nowadays sex change is accompanied by “such drastic surgical interventions and castration”. And according to Procházková, the verdict also points out that the state can supervise people who want to change their official gender in other ways.

And last but not least, according to the journalist, the judges also took into account the fact that the Czech Republic is one of the few countries in Europe that still require this procedure. For example, courts in Germany and Austria declared the procedure unconstitutional already in 2011, the European Court of Human Rights six years later. And according to critics, in addition, the Czech Republic violated the European Convention on Human Rights, i.e. specifically the right to privacy and family life.

Andrea Procházková describes the entire Czech anabasis regarding the end of castrations of trans people as stories of two worlds: One is about courage and the other is about cowardice. According to her, personal bravery was shown by a trans man who challenged the Civil Code in its current form in court, and thus had to overcome many obstacles.

On the other hand, Procházková sees in the case a lack of courage shown by politicians. According to her, in recent times there has been a growing trend among politicians to transfer difficult social or environmental decisions to the courts and thereby get rid of their own responsibility. However, their reasons for doing so may differ.

“They may fear that it will turn off their voters. Or maybe they don’t know what they think about it, or the topic is not your own. Sometimes it is said in the Chamber of Deputies that (in the case of these topics) there is freedom of voting. And I think it only shows that they don’t want to stir up emotions,” Andrea Procházková judges, adding that politicians also avoid the expected resistance of part of society, as happened with the heated debate regarding extraordinary pensions and valorization.

Who are trans people?

According to the journalist, transferring responsibility to the courts is also problematic from the point of view of the democratic organization of the country. “The Constitutional Court is not here primarily to make fundamental social decisions, because then it has much less legitimacy. These are 15 judges who are chosen by the president, approved by the Senate, and they are not elected politicians, either of the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, who then make the decision,” the journalist points out.

In any case, politicians will have to pay attention to the legal status of trans people. The Constitutional Court has no legislative authority, its judges can only mark some laws or their passages as unconstitutional, as happened in this case. The court thus only decided that mandatory castrations may not be part of the Czech legal system from the end of June 2025.

“And of course that raises further questions about how the politicians will approach it, because by then they should accept something to replace it. And it’s up to them how they do it. They just know that it must no longer be an operation, because it is unconstitutional and the Constitutional Court would cancel it again,” explains the journalist of the Respekt weekly.

It is not yet clear what the Civil Code will look like, taking into account people who describe themselves as non-binary or trans. “It’s about how strict we want to be as the Czech Republic,” notes Procházková. And he points to examples from other European countries. The Nordic countries, for example, choose a liberal approach and only a declaration is needed for an official gender change. Other countries require, for example, opinions from sexologists and psychiatrists.

“All those countries have kind of accepted that people don’t change their gender just because they decide from one day to the next. That this is often an important life decision for them, a difficult life decision that they have to communicate not only to their loved ones, but in general, that it is not something that just happens,” says Procházková, adding that Czech politicians should have this sensitive take note of the position of trans people when drafting the new Civil Code.

In the 5:59 podcast, you will also learn why the Constitutional Court reached a different verdict on Tuesday than two years ago, or about the fact that the amendment to the Civil Code has been pending with the Ministry of Justice since 2018. Listen in the player at the beginning of the article.

Podcast 5:59