Supreme Court petition marks new law to ‘remove’ trans men

The petition, led by transgender rights activists Manveer Yadav and Vishwanath Maithil, who identify as transgender, states that the 2026 amendment overhauls the 2019 law and is “a complete departure from the SC’s recommendations in its landmark 2014 The principle laid down in the case of National Legal Services Authority v Union of India, which recognized “transgender” as an umbrella term covering a wide and diverse range of identities, including trans men and trans-masculine identities, trans women, non-binary persons, genderqueer individuals and socio-cultural groups including hijras, kinnars, aravanis and jogta, and held that the criterion for recognition must be “psychological testing” and not “biological testing”.‘The other two petitioners are transgender rights activists and transgender women Abhina Aher and Vinshi Shahi.The petitioners say the 2026 law replaces the identity-based self-determination framework with externally verifiable biomarkers and a categorical list of named transfemale sociocultural communities, which excludes transmen.Emphasizing that the Transgender Rights Bill 2019, prior to the amendment, defined “transgender” as including trans men and trans women (with or without medical intervention), intersex persons, genderqueer persons, and designated socio-cultural communities. Furthermore, it guarantees the right to self-understanding of gender identity. “Together, this framework implements NALSA’s constitutional mandate. The 2026 amendments to the law systematically abolished it,” they stressed.The petition goes on to state that the 2026 Amendment first replaces the open, identity-based definition of “transgender person” in the 2019 Bill with a clear and exhaustive list: persons with designated socio-cultural identities (kinner, hijra, aravani, jogta and eunuch); persons with intersex variations as defined by biological and chromosomal criteria; and persons forced to adopt body modifications to assume a transgender identity.“Additionally, a proviso states that the definition “does not include, and shall not include, persons with diverse sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities.”In addition to this, the petitioners also expressed concern as they highlighted that “the constitutionally protected right to self-identification of gender identity has been completely ignored without any legal justification”. They added: “The combined effect of such an amendment would be to strip trans men and transmasculine identities of all statutory recognition and protection.”“Furthermore, every designated socio-cultural community in the definition is without exception a community of transwomen who were assigned male at birth. Transmasculine and transmasculine identities do not have equivalent designated communities in India; their structural invisibility is itself a defining feature of their experience,” the petition states.Further emphasizing that “the Legislature’s privileging of community-visible, transfeminine identities over self-perceived identities is not a neutral categorization but rather a bias against visibility enshrined in the statute.”The petitioners raised various issues and also drew attention to how the 2026 Amendment would reorganize the certification regime under the Transgender Rights Act 2019, “converting a facilitative process based on self-declaration into an administrative adjudication and mandatory state monitoring process for gender transition”.“Under the 2026 amendments, magistrates must now review the advice of the medical board and, if deemed ‘necessary or appropriate’, seek the help of other medical experts before issuing identification. This directly reintroduces the Corbett biological test that was expressly rejected in the NALSA case and has a chilling effect on gender expression,” the petitioners said.They further highlighted a report of a Parliamentary Standing Committee that warned against precisely such “medical gatekeeping” and sought the Supreme Court’s intervention to protect the rights of the community and urged the Supreme Court to declare the right to self-perceived gender identity as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution of India.“Health providers must provide details of anyone who has had gender confirmation surgery to magistrates and designated authorities without consent, purpose limitations or data protection safeguards. This breaches the rights to information privacy, decision-making autonomy and bodily autonomy under Article 21; breaches doctor-patient confidentiality; conflicts with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023; and creates a state-controlled gender transition surveillance architecture that is patently arbitrary and disproportionate under the Article 14,” the petition states.It further states: “The requirement that gender change must not affect existing rights and protections under the Act has been ignored, thereby removing a key statutory safeguard and leaving the rights of transitioning people unprotected.”In this context, the petitioners sought the intervention of the Supreme Court to protect the rights of the community and urged the Supreme Court to declare the right to self-perception of gender identity as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution of India.