NEWS FLASH

Australia Court Grants Legal Recognition For Transgender People Without Sexual Reassignment Surgery | Australia’s highest court has ruled that people who are transgender can be legally recognized as the gender by which they identify without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. According to the decision, knowledge of a person’s genitalia are not required because the characteristics that define a person’s gender are “confined to external physical characteristics that are socially recognizable.” Australia recently allowed for individuals to identify their sex as “X” on their passports, but the U.K.’s decision to opt out of sex identification on passports entirely eliminates the problem of transgender people facing discrimination for a perceived “mismatch” of their gender.