Japan court rules toilet restrictions for transgender officials

May 27, 2021 – The Tokyo High Court ruled that it was legal for the Japanese Trade Ministry to impose restrictions on transgender officials on the use of women toilets.

Judge Junichi Kitazawa said that the restrictions cannot be considered “unreasonable” while overruling the lower court’s order. The state was ordered to pay 110,000 Yen ($1,000) to the transgender official as compensation for the psychological discomfort caused by a superior’s ‘illegal’ deprecation to the transgender official stating that they should “return to being a man”.

The previous fine being 1.32 million Yen was imposed by the Tokyo District Court in 2019. The District Court had deemed the restriction on the use of the women’s toilet by a transgender official ‘illegal’, which has now been overruled by the High Court all while reducing the fine for demeaning the transgender official.

Reports in the Japanese media stated that the formerly male plaintiff ‘had been medically diagnosed with a kind of gender identity disorder after they started working at the ministry and started wearing feminine clothes after revealing their gender identity to their colleagues back in 2010’. Some colleagues felt uncomfortable sharing the women’s toilet with the transgender official and so the ministry deemed it best to restrict the formerly male and now female plaintiff from using the women’s toilet.

Her lawyer has considered the ruling to be ‘sloppy’ and the plaintiff vows to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court.