Hämäläinen v Finland - Arrest

ECtHR 16 July 2014, Appl. Nr. 37359/09 (Hämäläinen v Finland)

Hämäläinen was Finnish national born in 1963. He was born a male and married in 1996. They had a child in 2002. In 2009 Hämäläinen underwent male-to-female gender reassignment surgery. In June 2006 she changed her first names. Het identity number couldn’t be changed to indentificate her female gender in het official documents. This was only possible when her wife consented to the marriage being turned into a civil partnership, which she refuses to do. Or the couple should get divorced to change the document number. Divorce was against their religious convictions; therefore they preferred to stay married. The request from Hämäläinen to be registered as female was refused. She appealed to the domestic courts against the refusal to register her as a female. The grounds that the law relating to confirmation of the gender of transsexuals was not intended to change the fact that only a man and a woman could marry under Finnish law. The Supreme Administrative Court refused het further appeal in 2010 and in 2012 Fourth Section ECtHR held unanimously that there had been no violation of Article 8 ECHR in her case. She appealed to the Grand Chamber.

They said that there was no violation of Article 8, that there was no need to examine the complaint under Article 12 and that there had been no violation of Article 14.

“While it is regrettable that the applicant faces daily situations in which the incorrect identity number creates inconvenience for her, the Court considers that the applicant has a genuine possibility of changing that state of affairs: her marriage can be converted at any time, ex lege, into a registered partnership with the consent of her spouse. If no such consent is obtained, the possibility of divorce, as in any marriage, is always open to her. In the Court’s view, it is not disproportionate to require, as a precondition to legal recognition of an acquired gender, that the applicant’s marriage be converted into a registered partnership as that is a genuine option which provides legal protection for same-sex couples that is almost identical to that of marriage…” [para 87].