Articles about legal cases and judgements, and policing matters. Read our briefing papers on bodily integrity, discrimination, identification documents and detention
The High Court handed down judgement today in the case of NSW Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages v Norrie on Wednesday 2 April. The case is about a transgender person who was born biologically male, had gender reassignment as an adult to affirm an identity as a woman, and who now identifies as being…
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Update: We welcome the High Court judgement to recognise Norrie as having “non-specific” gender. We take no pleasure in having to comment on this case, currently before the High Court, Australia’s highest court, which has a hearing likely to be heard on 4 March 2014. However, the case raises the stakes for intersex people in…
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Gay News Network has kindly published an opinion piece by OII Australia president Morgan Carpenter: While it may not be foremost in the minds of many gay men, the clitoris is the only part of any human body that’s purely designed for pleasure. But is too much of a good thing a bad thing? Research…
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This 2008 case before the Family Court of Australia saw a request for confirmation of sterilisation associated with a changed sex of rearing in a 4-year old. The case is entitled, Re: Lesley (Special Medical Procedure) [2008] FamCA 1226. The judge in the case reports at length on affidavits supplied by the paediatric surgeons and…
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Here we look in detail at a case selected by the Chief Justice for mention in her February 2013 submission to the current Senate inquiry into the involuntary or coerced sterilisation of people with disabilities, and intersex people. The case is entitled, In the Matter of the Welfare of a child A (1993) FLC 92-402…
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This is an analysis of the NSW Court of Appeal judgement in the matter of Norrie v the NSW Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM), in relation to its relevance to intersex people. Update The case has now been appealed to the High Court by the NSW government. Our briefing paper on the High…
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Lizzie Reis writes about the M.C case taken by Advocates for Informed Choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Crawford family and pro bono lawyers. Writing at Nursing Clio Reis says: M.C. had been identified male at birth, but his genitals were sufficiently indeterminate that surgeons removed his ambiguous phallus, a testis, and testicular tissue…
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Advocates for Informed Choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, pro bono lawyers and parents Pam and Mark Crawford have filed “the first ever impact litigation lawsuit” in the US for “performing an irreversible and medically unnecessary surgery on an infant who was in the state’s care at the time of the surgery”.
Our second submission to the Seante inquiry on involuntary or coerced sterilisation is occasioned by new developments including new principles published in Victoria, a submission by the Chief Justice of the Family Court, and a Senate report on anti-discrimination law.
Our response to a recent submission by the Chief Justice of the Family Court on protection from discrimination.
In the light of debate around same sex marriage, marriage equality and the legal recognition of intersex people, Gina Wilson writes on the marriage rights of intersex people. The first thing to address is our right to marriage of any sort. When the Howard government proposed changes to the definition in the Marriage Act so…
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A Brisbane Family Court case in 1979, In the marriage of C and D (falsely called C), annulled a marriage on the basis that an intersex man could not be legally married because marriage can only be between someone who is seen to be wholly male and someone who is seen to be wholly female….
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