TOKYO: In a landmark ruling, Japan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favour of a transgender bureaucrat who sued the government over access to female toilets at work.
The court found that a decision barring the woman from using nearby toilets and forcing her to use other facilities two floors from her office was “extremely lacking in validity”.
The move “overly accommodated other employees and unjustly disregarded how the plaintiff might be disadvantaged”, the court added.
The ruling, the first by Japan’s highest court on the work environment for LGBT individuals, follows a series of mostly positive regional court rulings about same-sex marriage and comes after the passage of a law to promote understanding of the LGBT community.
The case was brought by a transgender woman in her fifties, who was told by her employer, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, that she could only use a female toilet two floors from her office.
She argued being barred from the female toilets nearest to her “deeply hurt” her dignity and violated a law that protects state employees against loss or damage in the workplace.
The woman had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria around 1999, while already a government employee, and in 2009 told her supervisor she wished to dress and work as a woman.
A Tokyo District Court ruled in 2019 that the ministry’s restrictions on restroom usage were unlawful, but the decision was reversed in 2021 by the Tokyo High Court.
In Japan, transgender people can only legally change their gender on their family register if they have had gender reassignment surgery. The woman in the court case was unable to have the surgery due to health reasons, media reports said.
Officials at the ministry said their decision was justified because of a lack of “public understanding” toward transgender people using the facilities of their declared gender.
The decision was backed by a neutral body that arbitrates personnel decisions in government.
But in a hearing last month, the plaintiff’s team argued that no female employees at the ministry had explicitly voiced any discomfort about sharing restrooms.
On June 16, Japan enacted a law meant to promote understanding of the LGBT community that critics say provides no human rights guarantees, though some lawmakers said it was too permissive.
Though the law was watered down before being passed, due to demands from conservative lawmakers, it still sparked an anti-transgender backlash. Some lawmakers formed a group to guarantee the safety of women in toilets and public baths or hot springs.
In five local court cases on same-sex marriage in Japan over the last two years, the most recent a month ago, four courts ruled either that not allowing it was unconstitutional or nearly so. One said that not allowing it was in line with the constitution.