European Court says UK discriminated against trans woman when denying her pension

The European Court of Justice has ruled that the UK government was wrong to deny the pension of a transgender woman because she had not reached male retirement age. The trans woman, known only as MB, was born in 1948 and married a woman in 1974 with which she had two children. MB began to live life as a woman in 1991 and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1995. The couple never had an annulment, for religious reasons.

Because there was no annulment, MB was never granted a full gender recognition certificate, and was refused a state pension at 60 and told to wait until the male pensionable age, which is 65.

MB challenged the decision in the UK, which was then taken up with the ECJ.

The ECJ said: “The UK legislation constitutes direct discrimination based on sex and is, for that reason, prohibited by the directive”. They argued that if a person has lived a significant period of their life as another gender and had undergone gender reassignment surgery they must be considered to have changed gender.