Czech Health Ministry loses another case in which it rejected a request for compensation for forced sterilization, must revisit that decision, NGOs presume there are dozens more such cases

The Czech Health Ministry must review a request submitted to it by a woman who claims she was forcibly sterilized in 1979 and is seeking compensation. The Supreme Administrative Court (NSS) has upheld a decision from the Municipal Court in Prague stating that the surgery was performed without health care personnel informing the woman beforehand of its irreversibility, which violated the legal regulations on sterilization in effect at the time.

The original medical records do not include the woman’s acknowledgment that she had been instructed as to the irreversibility of sterilization as part of her consent to the surgery. The League of Human Rights informed news server Romea.cz of the judgment.

The ministry alleged that the woman had been sufficiently informed and had voluntarily requested sterilization. However, the Municipal Court in Prague did not identify with that conclusion.

Now the ministry’s cassation complaint to the NSS has failed. That court has reminded the ministry that the legal regulations in effect at the time required not just written consent to such surgery, but also that patients be instructed in writing as to the degree to which the surgery could be reversed.

According to the court, not only do the original medical records of the woman in this case contain no such instructions, they were not compiled until after the surgery had been performed. “It is possible, therefore, to conclude that the plaintiff was not instructed before the surgery was performed to the degree required by the legal regulations in effect at the time ,” the NSS verdict reads.

The operation to which the woman consented in 1979 was cervical surgery. As she was being examined, health care workers announced to her that she would also have to undergo another surgery involving ovarian sterilization.

Women who were illegally sterilized, i.e., who did not freely decide to permanently end their ability to conceive normally and who were not given sufficient information about the impacts of sterilization, have been able to request one-time compensation of CZK 300,000 [EUR 12,000] if the surgery was performed between 1966 and March of 2012. It was possible to apply for compensation in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

As of January 2025, the ministry had received 2,266 requests for compensation. The Chamber of Deputies is reviewing a bill to extend the deadline by which requests can be submitted by two more years.

The NSS verdict could impact other women whose compensation requests have been rejected. On the basis of analyzing the anonymized decisions on such requests secured by the ROMEA organization, it is possible, according to the League of Human Rights, to assume there are dozens of such cases.

“As far as the extension of the deadline for filing requests goes, such applicants should decidedly reapply [if that becomes possible],” said Anna Indra Štefanides, a lawyer with the League of Human Rights. She added that her organization’s lawyers will not be able to track down these women on their own.

“Ideally, the Health Ministry should reach out to these women itself, as it has their contact information and data [on their cases],” Štefanides said. In the former Czechoslovakia, sterilization was systematized when the Health Ministry introduced guidelines for it in 1971.

In 1979, the state issued regulations on how to financially motivate women to undergo sterilization. The last known case of an illegal sterilization happened in 2007.

The European Roma Rights Centre reported its suspicions that forced sterilizations of Romani women in particular were still underway in 2004. Dozens of women subsequently turned to the ombudsman and some sued in court.