Litigation Degree: First
Case No: 5432/42 JY
Issuing Court: Administrative Court
Judgment: Favorable, the plaintiff was readmitted to Al-Azhar University
Subject: Right to Education to Transgender People after Obtaining Legal Gender Recognition
Judgment Date: 02/07/1991
Summary:
The plaintiff filed a claim before the Egyptian judiciary to overturn Al-Azhar University’s decision to suspend her after she underwent a sex change procedure from male to female and changed her name from Sayed to Sally. She then retrieved new documents in her new name, which resulted in her suspension from Al-Azhar University. She appealed the university president’s decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, which accepted the appeal and annulled the university president’s decision.
Facts:
The plaintiff Sally filed a claim before the Egyptian judiciary for reversing the decision of the university administration to suspend her, and re-enroll her at the Women’s Faculty instead of the Men’s Faculty, to match the sex correction procedure that the plaintiff underwent at Zamalek Hospital on 29/1/1988, after she had undergone two to three years of hormonal treatment. The plaintiff subsequently issued a new certificate of enrollment, No. 491, on 11/5/1988. She was also issued a national ID card from the office of Al-Matareyah Civil Registry in Cairo Governorate, No. 112516, on 25/9/1988, as well as a passport in her new name, Sally, and her new sex as female. She was also married on 4/7/1990, and the administration of Al-Azhar University suspended her on 13/4/1988.
Judgment:
The University Council stated that the plaintiff must undergo three medical examinations: a full medical examination, an ultrasound examination, and a chromosomal examination. The first concluded that Sally’s genitals were those of a male, as well as having both internal and external male traits, thus her sex cannot be changed from male to female. Her desire to change her sex is psychological rather than biological and she must stop undergoing hormone therapy. The second examination also concluded that the bladder and prostate gland worked well and there were no uterus and ovaries, thus the absence of the plaintiff’s internal female organs and the existence of the internal male organs. The third examination also concluded that the plaintiff carried male chromosomes. The three examinations thus denied the urgent medical need to change the plaintiff’s sex. However, in the plaintiff’s first appeal against the decision of the university president to suspend her, The Administrative Court dismissed the case and referred the case documents to the Board of State Commissioners on 13/11/1989, but in case No. 42/5432 on 2/7/1991, it granted the plaintiff’s claim, annulled the decision to suspend Sally and re-enrolled her in the University, but in the faculty for women based on official and evidentiary documents provided by the Civil Registry that dealt with the plaintiff as female.