Lisbeth Wu won her request to the Taipei High Administrative Court to change her legal gender to female without having to undergo surgery, which is usually required in Taiwan for such cases.
Wu, who holds dual citizenship with Taiwan and the U.S., presented her U.S. passport with an “F” gender marker instead of the proof of surgery in her initial filing in 2020. Her request was initially rejected without her surgical information, but she won her appeal on August 26 and is now approved to apply for her “F” on Taiwanese documents.
Wu is the fifth person in Taiwan to win such a case since 2021, perhaps indicating a change in policy. In this case, as in others, the court said that the 2008 mandate requiring surgery places an undue burden on the transgender applicant, to a point of it being unlawful. Wu and the other applicants did provide mental health assessments, another requirement of the 2008 rules.
Taiwan was the first Asian country to pass marriage equality in 2019 and has one of the largest annual Pride Parades in Asia.
On July 19, the first transgender man won his case to change his legal gender without surgery in Taiwan.
The Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, the group that represented Wu’s cases pro-bono, said, “administrative agencies should stop being lazy, change unconstitutional and illegal interpretations as soon as possible, and give transgender citizens the right to gender autonomy.”
“We congratulate Yuxuan, who can finally have her gender identity recognised by law in the land she loves and live the way she wants!” the group said.
