Japan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday (July 11) handed down a landmark decision in favor of a transgender employee who sued the government to ensure women’s access to toilets in their workplace. The high court ruled that the banning of the woman in her 50s from the nearest toilets, forcing her to use other toilets located on floors other than her office, was “seriously lacking of validity”.
This is the first ruling by Japan’s highest court regarding the working conditions of LGBT people. Experts say the move could change how the public and private sectors handle sensitive issues around women-only spaces.
Asked about the court ruling, the Prime Minister’s Office said the government would “take appropriate action” after studying the verdict. “The government will resolutely work towards realizing a society in which diversity is respected,” government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said, without giving further details.
Arbitrage
The case began with a complaint from a transgender woman who was told by her employer, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, that she could only use a women’s toilet two floors up from her office. She argued that being barred from the nearest women’s restroom “deeply undermines” her dignity and violates a law that protects state employees in the workplace.
This woman was diagnosed with gender dysphoria around 1999, when she was already a civil servant, and she told her superior in 2009 that she wanted to dress and work like a woman. The ministry approved some of her requests, but insisted she could only use the women’s restrooms a few floors up from her office, citing a lack of “public understanding” of transgender people.
The decision had been approved by a neutral body for arbitration of decisions involving civil servants. However, at a hearing last month, the complainant argued that no ministry employee had explicitly expressed discomfort with toilet sharing.
“Embarrassment”
Japanese law currently requires transgender people to undergo surgery if they want to gain legal recognition of their identity. The plaintiff in this case has not changed sex, but lives as a woman.
In 2019, a Tokyo court agreed with him, finding that the ministry’s treatment “restricted important legal rights”. But a higher court overturned the judgment in 2021 and sided with the state, acknowledging that it had a responsibility to consider the “embarrassment and anxiety” felt by others when this woman used the bathroom for women.
Earlier this year, Japan passed its first law ostensibly aimed at protecting the LGBT community from discrimination. However, campaigners have denounced the bill’s watered-down wording, which only opposes “unfair discrimination”.