Monsieur or madame? No need to say when booking a train, EU says

• French national rail required gendered titles
• EU court ruled gendered data was unnecessary
• Case will impact online forms across all of the EU

LONDON - France's state-owned railway has been ordered to stop collecting passengers' gender markers when they buy tickets online, in what is being hailed as a landmark case for non-binary recognition in the European Union.

Train operator SNCF Connect only offered passengers the choice between selecting "monsieur" or "madame" on their website, which LGBTQ+ groups argued broke the governing principles of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It is the first case addressing the right to identify as non-binary - a term used to describe someone who is neither male nor female, or both - to reach EU level.

The EU Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that the collection of binary gender data when buying a ticket online was unnecessary and unlawful, and could lead to discrimination.

Here's everything you to know.

What was the case about and how did SNCF breach GDPR principles?

The initial complaint against SNCF was brought to France's national data protection agency (CNIL) by 64 individual customers, supported by rights groups Mousse Association and Stop Homophobie, in 2021. 

Those involved argued the inability to buy a train ticket online without identifying as male or female "excludes people who identify as non-binary, particularly among trans or intersex people, or who do not wish to restrict their identity".

The case drew on the GDPR's data minimisation and accuracy principles, the first of which states that a company must ensure the information they process is relevant to its purpose and limited to what is necessary. 

CNIL said the complaint was unfounded as SNCF's request for the terms "monsieur" or "madame" could be deemed necessary in order to "indicate civility" in correspondence with customers.

An appeal was lodged with France's Council of State and in 2023 this was escalated to the EU Court of Justice, looking only at the minimisation principle of GDPR. 

On Thursday, the court ruled against SNCF, stating that the processing of data for "the purpose of which is to personalise the commercial communication based on their gender identity, cannot be regarded as necessary".

"This case signals over-due progress: less paperwork, fewer binary boxes, and a future where EU law finally recognises and protects non-binary and trans lives. The next generation deserves nothing less," said Richard Köhler, expert advisor at European trans organisation TGEU.

What does this mean for non-binary and intersex rights across the EU?

The court ruling is a clarification of GDPR policy and is binding across the EU. This means that private and public bodies in all member states will be banned from the mandatory use of gendered titles online where they are not necessary for service.

This could include online forms for buying goods or services, registering complaints, or contacting businesses and government departments, and is likely to have a significant impact on the recognition of non-binary identities across the bloc.

At present, Malta, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark are the only European countries to formally recognise non-binary identities, according to data collected by LGBTQ+ organisation ILGA World. Some regions in Spain also have their own process.

Hungary and Bulgaria have both passed laws that currently make recognising gender diverse identities impossible.

"Discrimination based on sex, gender and sexual orientation affects a large percentage of the population, including people who aren't LGBTQ+," Etienne Deshoulières, an attorney at the Paris bar who specialises in LGBTQ+ discrimination law, told Context.

"The fact that we have to say repeatedly if we are a man or a woman in our everyday lives only strengthens our understanding of the world in a binary way and reinforce discrimination against people who don't identify in that way."

Have similar cases happened elsewhere?

Similar campaigns to remove gendered data collection have been successful. In 2022, Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway, was forced to offer passengers a third gender option on online booking forms following a ruling from the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt. 

That same year the public transport operator in Paris, RATP, added the option of choosing "unspecified" instead of gendered titles following a request from Stop Homophobie.

Vistara and AirAsia, airlines in India, have allowed for passengers to buy tickets with the title "Mx" since 2022, after LGBTQ+ group YesWeExist launched a campaign petition website Change.org.

Mousse Association now intends to launch a case addressing binary gender data collection on the French civil status registry, in hopes of securing neutral gender recognition on birth certificates, ID cards and passports across the EU, Deshoulières said.

Two cases involving GDPR regulations and gender recognition are also taking place at a national level in Germany and Spain, Koehler said.

There are also two cases at the European level, one involving a trans Iranian refugee whose gender was recorded as female in Hungary, and the other involving a Bulgarian trans women in Italy who says her freedom of movement is restricted by the inability to change her gender marker.

(Reporting by Lucy Middleton; Editing by Jon Hemming.)