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Detail

The Republic of Ecuador is a sovereign state in South America. It borders Colombia and Peru, as well as having coastline on the Pacific Ocean.

Timeline

2026, February 5. The Full Court of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador issues judgment in Case 4-24-CN.¹

The question at issue concerns the constitutionality of Article 94 of the Ley Orgánica de Gestión de la Identidad y Datos Civiles (LOGIDC; “Law on Identity Management and Civil Data”).² At the time the case was brought, the LOGIDC provided that Ecuadorean citizens were not legally permitted to change the gender markers on their identity documents until reaching the age of majority.

The complainant was a minor who challenged the constitutionality of the law on the basis that it infringed their right to free development of personality and identity because it disregarded adolescents’ capacity to exercise those rights as they grew older.

The Court finds that adolescents should be permitted to file a change of legal gender if:

• they are accompanied by their legal representatives when doing so, and
• the application includes psychosocial reports based on individualised evaluations that certify that they have the maturity to make free, informed and voluntary decisions to change their gender,

and that art 94 of the LOGIDC is unconstitutional insofar as it provides otherwise.³

Footnotes

1. Corte Constitucional del Ecuador [Constitutional Court of Ecuador], Case 4-24-CN, 10 March 2026. ↩︎
2. Ley Orgánica de Gestión de la Identidad y Datos Civiles [Organic Law on Identity Management and Civil Data] (Ecuador) art 94. ↩︎
3. Human Rights Watch (2026). ↩︎

References

Human Rights Watch (2026, March 12). Ecuador: Court affirms adolescents’ right to gender recognition. Retrieved 14 March 2026.

Metadata

• Version: 1 (14 March 2026).
• Created: 14 March 2026.