STRASBOURG, France (CN) — Europe’s top rights court ruled Tuesday that Russia violated the rights of a transgender mother by revoking her parental rights after she transitioned.
The European Court of Human Rights held that Moscow discriminated against the woman, referred to as A.M. in court documents, whose contact with her children was severed after her ex-wife complained that the gender transition was psychologically damaging to their children.
“The court concludes that in restricting the applicant’s parental rights and contact with her children without doing a proper evaluation of the possible harm to the applicant’s children, the domestic courts relied on her gender transition, singled her out on the ground of her status as a transgender person and made a distinction which was not warranted in the light of the existing convention standards,” the Strasbourg-based court wrote.
A.M., who was born male, married Ms. N., as she’s identified in court records, in 2008 and the couple had two children before their divorce in 2015. Later that year, a Russian court recognized A.M.’s transition from male to female, issuing her new identification documents with her gender listed as female.
Until 2016, A.M. had regular visits with her children during which she continued to present herself as a man, as N objected to her ex presenting as a woman. Despite this, by the end of 2016, N refused to allow A.M. to see their children because of the gender transition. In 2017, N went to court to sever A.M.’s parental rights. A court expert found that “contact between [the applicant] and [her children] and information on the gender transition would have a negative impact on their mental health and development.”
In 2018, the court terminated A.M.'s parental rights. Since then, N has moved with the children and A.M. no longer knows where they are. Russian social services has refused to provide A.M. with any information about them.
The rights court concluded that the Russian domestic courts unlawfully discriminated against A.M. based on her gender identity.
“Despite the precautions taken by the domestic courts in stating that their decisions were not based on the applicant’s transition, but on the potential harmful effect on her children, the inescapable conclusion is that her gender identity was consistently at the center of the deliberations concerning her and was omnipresent at every stage of the judicial proceedings,” a seven-judge panel of the court’s Third Section wrote.
Further, the judges found the domestic courts had failed to adequately consider the impact on A.M.’s children by severing her relationship with them.
“The reasons put forward by the authorities and the evidence presented in support of their position cannot be regarded as convincing and sufficient to prove the existence of any possible harm to the children’s development and to justify the restriction of the applicant’s parental rights,” the ruling states, adding that a lack of such justification violates the right to family life under the European Convention for Human Rights, which created the court in 1953.
Activists and NGOs say that Russia has been encroaching on the rights of the country’s LGBTQ community. Since a 2013 law banned sharing information about gay relationships with minors, LGBTQ people living in the Russian Federation have faced increased discrimination and abuse, Human Rights Watch found. A series of constitutional amendments passed earlier this year defined a family as “one man and one woman” and banned transgender people from adopting children.
The rights court ordered Russia to pay A.M. 10,870 euros ($13,000) in damages and expenses.
Follow @mollyquell
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
