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A transgender man has lost his legal battle to be registered as the father or progenitor of his son in the UK after the supreme court refused to consider his final appeal.
Freddy McConnell, a 34-year-old freelance journalist with The Guardian, gave birth in 2018 after stopping her hormone treatment. She was hoping to challenge an appeals court ruling this spring that motherhood is defined as being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person doing so is considered a man or a woman in law.
The decision not to consider your case is a severe blow to LGBTQ + rights advocates. The case was seen as key by campaign group Stonewall, who hoped the law would recognize all parents “for who they are.”
McConnell began the medical transition to testosterone therapy in 2013 and in 2014 underwent a double mastectomy. His passport and NHS records were changed to show that he was male, but he retained his female reproductive system. She gave birth after stopping her hormone treatment and allowing her menstrual cycle to restart.
Both the high court, in September 2019, and the court of appeals, in April 2020, ruled that, although he was considered a man by law and had a gender recognition certificate to prove it, he could not appear on the birth certificate of your child as “parent” or father. McConnell had argued that this violated the Human Rights Act.
In the appeals court, Lord Burnett ruled in favor of the right of a child born to a transgender father to know the biological reality of his birth, rather than the father’s right to be recognized on the birth certificate in his legal gender.
Burnett said the laws passed by parliament did not “decouple the concept of mother from gender.” He said any interference with McConnell’s rights to family life, caused by birth registration documents describing him as a mother when living as the father of her child, could be justified.
McConnell said it was the “traditional system that does not take modern families into account.”
The supreme court’s decision marks the end of the road for McConnell’s UK legal case, but he said he would appear before the European court of human rights in Strasbourg to hear the case.
A spokeswoman for the highest court, the highest in the United Kingdom, said on Monday that the judges had decided not to consider the case because “the requests do not raise a moot point of law that should be considered at this time taking into account that the cases they were the subject of a judicial decision and reviewed on appeal ”.
McConnell said the decision left a “hodgepodge” of rules surrounding paternity registration for LGBT people that “needs a full review.”
“The law on birth registration does not treat LGBT people equally on any level,” he said. “There needs to be a series of cases to address this or a change in the law. I feel like I’m too into this to stop now. I’m going to keep fighting and I ask anyone who can contribute to this to come closer.
Nancy Kelley, Stonewall’s executive director, said the Supreme Court’s decision was “deeply disappointing.”
“All parents, including LGBT parents, deserve to be recognized for who they are and it is incredibly frustrating that the supreme court has missed an opportunity to advance equality,” he said.
“Current legislation contradicts the fragile equality that trans people currently have, where they can have full recognition in some legal documents, but not in others. Like any other parent, trans parents must be able to have their relationship with their child recognized on their child’s birth certificates. “
