The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the way the law has defined ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, and where that leaves India’s intersex people who do not fit into the male–female binary in biological terms
Did the law, while trying to be inclusive for transgender people, end up turning discriminatory towards intersex people? This is the question that the Supreme Court is going to examine.
Gopi Shankar M, an intersex rights activist, had filed a public interest litigation in 2024 challenging the interchangeable use of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in law and policy, and the legal definition of “transgender person” which ends up including intersex people. In December 2025, a two-judge bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said it was “a very good issue” and referred it to a three-judge bench.