The Case: A Decade of Refusals
The ruling has its roots in the experience of a Bulgarian trans woman, identified in court documents as K.M.H., who was born in 1990 and has lived in Italy for nearly a decade with her long-term partner. She has been undergoing hormone therapy and has long presented as a woman. A fact confirmed by medical opinions and legal assessments. Yet every attempt to have her name, gender marker, and personal identification number updated on her Bulgarian civil status documents was denied by Bulgarian courts, which argued that national law permits no such changes and that the term "sex" must be understood in a strictly biological sense as determined at birth.
The daily consequences were far from bureaucratic. Presenting documents that did not reflect her gender created persistent difficulties across virtually every area of life; accessing healthcare, finding employment, renting a home, enrolling in education, and even completing routine transactions such as paying by card. Each situation requiring official identification became a potential source of discrimination. Because her life in Italy depended on valid Bulgarian identity documents, the mismatch did not merely affect her in Bulgaria; it followed her across borders and undermined her ability to exercise her rights as an EU citizen in the country where she actually lived.
The applicant herself expressed the personal weight of the moment: the ruling, she said, would finally allow her to obtain a Bulgarian passport that acknowledges what she has always been since childhood. She had chosen to build a life in Italy, and this step would allow her to seek work without facing discrimination.
After years of unsuccessful appeals through the Bulgarian court system, matters came to a head in February 2023 when Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation issued a binding interpretative decision establishing that national law categorically does not permit courts to approve any change of sex, name, or personal identification number for trans people in the civil status register. This effectively introduced a blanket, automatic ban on LGR across the Bulgarian legal system. The Supreme Court, uncertain whether this ban was compatible with EU law, referred the matter to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling.
A Background of Mounting Condemnation
Bulgaria's treatment of trans people had attracted serious international criticism long before today's ruling. The European Court of Human Rights found in 2020, in the case of Y.T. v. Bulgaria, that the country was violating Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide accessible and transparent LGR procedures. A second Strasbourg ruling in 2022, P.H. v. Bulgaria, reached the same conclusion. Rather than prompting reform, these findings were followed by the 2023 Supreme Court decision that hardened the ban to its most absolute form.
It is worth noting that Bulgaria's Constitutional Court had previously ruled that legal "sex" is fixed at birth — a position that placed Bulgaria's domestic constitutional order on a direct collision course with EU law. The CJEU's ruling today addresses that conflict head-on, and there is no appeal from the Court of Justice on that point.
The CJEU had itself been building a body of increasingly protective case law in recent years. Rulings in the Mousse, Deldits, and Mirin cases had each advanced protections for trans people under EU law, with Mirin establishing that member states must recognise gender marker changes obtained in other member states. The Shipova case went further still, directly addressing for the first time whether a member state that provides no LGR procedure at all can be legally compelled to create one.
What the Court Found
In its judgment, the Court held that EU law precludes national legislation which does not permit the amendment of gender data in civil status registers — including sex, family name, first name, and personal identification number — for nationals of that member state who have exercised their right to move and reside freely in another EU country. The legal foundation is Article 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which guarantees freedom of movement and residence to all EU citizens, read in conjunction with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, specifically the rights to private and family life and to non-discrimination.
The Court's reasoning was direct: identity documents and passports are essential tools for EU nationals to exercise freedom of movement. A discrepancy between the gender marker on a person's documents and their lived gender identity creates concrete difficulties at identity checks, during travel, and in professional settings. These are not minor inconveniences; they are material obstacles to the exercise of a fundamental right. The right to private life, the Court affirmed, protects gender identity and obliges member states to provide clear, accessible, and effective procedures for its legal recognition.
The Court also addressed the question of EU law's primacy unambiguously, stating that national courts cannot treat their own constitutional court's rulings as binding when those rulings conflict with EU law. This is a pointed signal directed specifically at those member states that have attempted to deploy domestic constitutional provisions as a defence against EU-level obligations on trans rights. The ruling now returns to Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation, which must resolve the underlying case in line with the CJEU's interpretation. There is no mechanism to appeal that interpretation.
Legal Scholars Weigh In
Academic observers have noted the ruling's significance for the broader development of EU law. Pieter Cannoot, professor of law and diversity at Ghent University, described the judgment as part of a growing line of EU case law that limits national restrictions on the recognition of LGBTQ identities, and as an important step towards recognising a right to legal gender recognition in the EU — linking the issue not only to free movement but also to fundamental rights including privacy and non-discrimination.
Uladzislau Belavusau, senior researcher in European law at the University of Amsterdam and the T.M.C. Asser Institute, characterised the ruling as part of a broader shift in EU constitutional law, where the accuracy of identity documents is increasingly bound up with the practical exercise of EU citizenship. In his reading, the judgment reflects the emergence of what he terms "sexual citizenship" within the Union — a framework in which recognition of gender identity becomes an intrinsic component of how free movement rights function in practice.
Three Member States in the Frame
Today's judgment extends well beyond the individual case that gave rise to it. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia currently each have laws, court decisions, or constitutional provisions that make legal gender recognition effectively impossible. Hungary enacted LGR-banning legislation in 2020; Slovakia followed with comparable restrictions in 2025. All three are now in direct conflict with EU law as set out by today's ruling.
Rights organisations have immediately called on the European Commission to act. ILGA-Europe's Senior Strategic Litigation Adviser Marie Ludwig described the judgment as a major step forward, noting that the Commission now has a strong legal basis to initiate infringement proceedings against member states that fail to comply. Richard Köhler of Transgender Europe welcomed the decision as one that addresses everyday obstacles created by mismatched documents, arguing that every person should have the right to documents that recognise rather than deny who they are. Adi Petrov of the Bilitis Resource Centre Foundation in Bulgaria welcomed it as an important step towards restoring dignity and legal certainty, whilst applicant's attorney Alexander Schuster described the outcome as a clear signal to countries that continue to block LGR, and a confirmation of the Union's commitment to protecting fundamental rights and minorities.
Denitsa Lyubenova of Bulgarian LGBTI organisation Deystvie, who co-represented the applicant at the EU level, called for all suspended cases in Bulgaria to be resumed without delay. She also highlighted a significant gap that today's ruling does not resolve: it applies to Bulgarian nationals who have exercised their right to free movement, but Bulgarian citizens who remain in the country still have no viable legal pathway to update their documents. She described this as an urgent matter requiring domestic legislative reform.
Support for the applicant throughout the proceedings was provided by Bilitis, Deystvie, ILGA-Europe, and TGEU, with legal representation provided domestically by Natasha Dobreva and at the EU level by Alexander Schuster and Denitsa Lyubenova.
What Happens Next
Rights groups are pressing the European Commission to monitor compliance closely and to launch infringement proceedings against Bulgaria should it fail to act on the judgment. They are additionally calling on the Commission to use all available legal instruments against Hungary and Slovakia. Advocates across Europe are also urging member states more broadly to reform their LGR procedures to ensure they are fast, transparent, and grounded in self-determination rather than conditional on medical or psychiatric assessments.
For the woman at the centre of this case, who spent the better part of a decade fighting through national courts for the most basic recognition of her identity, today's ruling is an overdue vindication. For the thousands of trans people across the EU who still live without that recognition, it provides a legal foundation on which further progress must now be built.