Foy v. Registrar General & Attorney General

In 2007, the High Court held that the failure to allow the applicant, a transgender woman who had undergone gender-affirming surgery, to obtain a new birth certificate recording her gender as female violated her rights under Article 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which had been made part of Irish law, despite having found in previous proceedings involving the same applicant that her constitutional right to privacy was not disproportionately or excessively infringed. The Court agreed with the applicant that existing Irish law barred the effective recognition of her Article 8 and 12 rights in Ireland as they rendered her without the power to correct or vary the original entry on her birth certificate. The High Court considered the European Court of Human Right’s 2002 decisions in Goodwin v. United Kingdom and I. v. United Kingdom, in which the Court held that the State’s failure to have a system of law in place affording proper respect for a trans person’s Convention rights violated Articles 8 and 12 of the Convention.