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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
In a landmark ruling for trans people in Poland, the Supreme Court has issued a resolution declaring that someone wishing to change their officially recognised gender no longer needs to involve their parents in the case.
Up until now, people who wanted to change their gender have had to sue their parents to do so, even if they are adults. That practice made the process more difficult for those involved.
The new ruling has been welcomed as “groundbreaking” by the government’s equality minister. However, the very idea that someone can legally change their gender was condemned as an “ideological absurdity” by the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party.
Sąd Najwyższy wydał przełomowy wyrok. Polskie prawo nie może wykluczać, dyskryminować i dzielić polskich rodzin. Osoby transpłciowe, które chcą dokonać korekty płci, nie będą musiały już pozywać własnych rodziców, a sprawy o uzgodnienie płci, będą się toczyły droga nieprocesową!
— Katarzyna Kotula (@KotulaKat) March 4, 2025
The reason that people have had to sue their parents to change gender is because Polish law currently does not specifically outline any procedure for changing gender. That has left courts to develop their own ad hoc way of regulating the issue.
That led to the development of a system under which a person wishing to change their recognised gender must file a lawsuit against their parents under article 189 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which concerns “action to determine the existence of a legal relationship”.
However, in a resolution issued on Tuesday by the Supreme Court’s civil chamber, it ruled that a request to change the gender designation in a birth certificate should be subject to so-called “non-litigious proceedings” (postępowanie nieprocesowe).
What that means in practice, explained lead judge Agnieszka Jurkowska-Chocyk, quoted by Polsat News, is that there is no need to create an “artificial defendant”, as is currently the case.
“A gender change case is not the result of a dispute between two entities with opposing interests, in which there is a need for the dispute to be resolved by an independent entity in the form of a court,” she explained, quoted by broadcaster TVN.
The judge added that, while considering the case, the court did not hear “convincing arguments justifying the position that the outcome of the proceedings to change the child’s registered gender concerns the rights of their parents”, who should therefore not be treated as someone with a legal interest in the case.
The court likewise found that the children of a person changing their gender should not be treated as a party to proceedings. However, the spouse of such a person can be.
The only way to change your legally recognised gender in Poland is to sue your parents – even if they are no longer alive.
That process is slow, complex and often traumatic for trans people and their families, writes @AnnaZabl https://t.co/euE230vEXt
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 1, 2023
In response to the decision, equality minister Katarzyna Kotula called it a “groundbreaking ruling” that shows that “Polish law cannot exclude, discriminate against and divide Polish families”.
However, on social media the Confederation party declared that it is not possible to “correct one’s sex”. It argued that “Polish law should not adapt to ideological absurdities, but should be based on reality”.
“And the reality is simple: sex is not an opinion, not a frame of mind and not a formality to be ‘agreed’, but a biological fact.”
Korygować to można wadę zgryzu, a nie płeć!
Polskie prawo nie powinno dostosowywać się do ideologicznych absurdów, tylko opierać się na rzeczywistości. A rzeczywistość jest prosta – płeć to nie opinia, nie samopoczucie i nie formalność do „uzgodnienia”, tylko fakt biologiczny.…
— Konfederacja (@KONFEDERACJA_) March 4, 2025
The Supreme Court’s decision was welcomed by Artur Grajewski, a judge on Warsaw’s district court, who told the Rzeczpospolita daily that “creating an artificial dispute for the purposes of gender determination proceedings is completely incomprehensible”.
He said that the kind of non-litigious proceedings that will now be used were “intended precisely for such cases”. However, Grajewski added that, in cases where the person wishing to change their gender is a child, it is “obvious” that their parents should be a party to proceedings.
While in opposition, current Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised to introduce a simpler gender-recognition process for trans people if he came to power. However, since taking office in December 2023, his coalition government has failed to put forward any such legislation.
For the last five years running, Poland has been ranked as the worst country in the European Union for LGBT+ people as a result of a lack of rights but also due to the hostile rhetoric of the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, which regularly condemned “LGBT ideology” and “gender ideology”.
Poland has been ranked as the worst country in the EU for LGBT+ people for the fifth year in a row https://t.co/5ciljeroir
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 15, 2024
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Krzysztof Cwik / Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
