Kuwait's constitutional court has struck down a contentious law long used to criminalize transgender people by forbidding the "imitation of the opposite sex."
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After weeks of deliberation and years of campaigning by human rights groups, the court ruled that the law policing people who dress and behave like the opposite sex was "inconsistent with the constitution's keenness to ensure and preserve personal freedom" because the law's terms were far too ambiguous. The article did not did not define how to determine the "opposite sex," allowing for "miscalculation" in criminalization, the court said.
The law had set the maximum penalty for cross-dressing at one-year in prison or a fine of $3,300.
The decision was hailed as a liberal counterweight to the conservative politics in Kuwait, a Gulf Arab sheikhdom where homosexual relations are criminalized with up to seven years in prison.
