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A transgender woman cannot be identified as the mother of her biological daughter, but must adopt her, according to a decision of the French Court of Cassation, which was described as “scandalous” by the plaintiff’s lawyers.
The Court of Cassation has been asked to rule on the case of Claire (a pseudonym), a 51-year-old woman who was born a man and had a child before completing her transition. In 2011, Claire was officially recognized by the French authorities as a woman. Then, in 2014, she had a daughter with her wife, because by then she had not completed the transition and still had male reproductive organs. Since then, she has asked to be recognized as the girl’s mother, but the French state denies it: as the girl’s mother, she has been offered to register as a “father” or to be adopted as a “second mother.”
At the end of 2018, the Montpellier Court of Appeal granted her the status of “biological mother”, a new category. The Court of Cassation annulled almost the entire decision, except the part that confirmed the rejection of her status as “mother” and referred the case to the Toulouse Court of Appeal.
The explanation of the French Court of Cassation
Claire Richard, Claire’s attorney, described the decision as “scandalous” and “a missed opportunity.” “Unfortunately, the battle is not over,” he added. “Therefore, a 6-year-old girl will only have one of her two mothers on her birth certificate, only one of her two fathers, the mother who gave birth because the other has no right to appear on it. “It is unacceptable,” she said.
The Court of Cassation “explained, in biological terms, that Claire can only be a father,” commented Mathieu Stockle, the lawyer who represented her in this trial, noting an “inconsistency”: Claire can be recognized as a father in the birth certificate of his daughter, although she is registered as a woman in the civil registry. The women’s lawyers intend to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
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