Parliament votes to make it easier for people to legally change name, gender

BERLIN (AP):

German lawmakers on Friday approved legislation that will make it easier for transgender, intersex and non-binary people to change their name and gender in official records.

The “self-determination law”, one of several social reforms that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s liberal-leaning coalition government pledged when it took office in late 2021, is set to take effect on November 1.

Germany, the European Union’s most populous nation, follows several other countries in making the change. Parliament’s lower house, the Bundestag, approved it by 374 votes to 251 with 11 abstentions.

The German legislation will allow adults to change their first name and legal gender at registry offices without further formalities. They will have to notify the office three months before making the change.

The existing “trans-sexual law”, which dates back four decades, requires individuals who want to change gender on official documents to first obtain assessments from two experts “sufficiently familiar with the particular problems of transsexualism” and then a court decision.

Since that law was drawn up, Germany’s top court has struck down other provisions that required transgender people to get divorced and sterilised, and to undergo gender-transition surgery.

“For over 40 years, the ‘trans-sexual law’ has caused a lot of suffering ... and only because people want to be recognised as they are,” Sven Lehmann, the government’s commissioner for queer issues, told lawmakers. “And today we are finally putting an end to this.”

The new legislation focuses on people’s legal identities. It does not involve any revisions to Germany’s rules for gender-transition surgery.

The new rules will allow minors 14 years and older to change their name and legal gender with approval from their parents or guardians; if they don’t agree, teenagers could ask a family court to over-rule them.

In the case of children younger than 14, parents or guardians would have to make registry office applications on their behalf.

After a formal change of name and gender takes effect, no further changes would be allowed for a year. The new legislation provides for operators of, for example, gyms and changing rooms for women to continue to decide who has access.

Martin Reichardt of the far-right Alternative for Germany blasted what he called “ideological nonsense”.

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in a statement that “there are numerous precautions against possibilities of abuse, however, improbable they may be”. He insisted that the new law takes into account the interests of the whole of society and said “much less will change with this law than some say”.

Among others, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Spain already have similar legislation.