Austria, Constitutional Court, V 4/06-7 (8 June 2006)
Divorce requirement lacked a legal basis.
The case concerned a trans woman who had undergone gender reassignment surgery and who applied for legal gender recognition. However, her request was denied on the basis that she was already married and did not plan to get a divorce. The Constitutional Court found that the provision requiring those applying for legal gender recognition not to be married lacked a legal basis. Although the Civil Code did indeed reserve marriage to different-sex couples, this was unrelated to the situation whereby one of the spouses applied for a rectification of their gender marker in the public registries. In any event, the Court also held that the ordinance regulating gender recognition did not comply with the legal criteria for the publication of legal acts and therefore declared it void in its entirety.