Key court decision: Czech Health Ministry must change its approach when verifying illegal sterilizations, lack of medical records must not be an obstacle
The Czech Health Ministry, according to the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS), must take active steps on its own to verify whether an applicant for compensation has been subjected to unlawful sterilization. In its rejection of a cassation complaint filed by the ministry, the NSS rejected the ministry's approach so far, which required applicants to prove their claims are justified.
That is the outcome of a decision published to the NSS website. Victims of illegal sterilizations performed between 1 July 1966 and 31 March 2012 can apply until the end of 2024 to receive CZK 300,000 [EUR 12,000] from the state and hundreds have done so.
The ministry rejected one woman’s application for compensation in the spring of 2022. It chiefly justified its decision by alleging that since the applicant’s original medical records had been shredded, she could not prove the illegality of her sterilization.
The Municipal Court in Prague received a lawsuit from the applicant and subsequently returned the case to the ministry for reassessment, at which point the ministry filed a cassation complaint. “The Supreme Administrative Court rejected the approach taken by the Health Ministry so far, which required applicants to fully prove their claims are justified and submit all the necessary documents to them. That approach does not respect the intent and the purpose of the law, which is to provide effective remedy for sterilizations unlawfully performed in the past,” the NSS website says.
The ministry’s practice, according to the NSS, has placed the applicants in a situation of evidentiary emergency. Given the intimate nature of these surgeries and the amount of time that has passed since their performance, the applicants frequently have no possibility to prove their sterilizations were unlawful.
According to the NSS, that problem arises if the original medical records no longer exist. They may have been destroyed, and frequently their destruction was also unlawful.
“The Health Ministry must take active steps on its own in the future to verify whether an applicant was subjected to unlawful sterilization. It must communicate to the applicant in a comprehensible way what testimony from which witnesses or what types of documentation can be designated for that purpose so the ministry can request them,” the NSS stated.
The court also clarified how the ministry should proceed in situations where the applicant’s original medical records no longer exist or are obviously unreliable. In such a case, it is enough if the applicant provides a claim that is at least defensible prima facie that she underwent an unlawful sterilization during the period under review.
In the Czech Republic, suspicions of the forced sterilizations of women, most of them Romani, were raised in 2004 by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Dozens of women then complained to the Public Defender of Rights (the ombudsman) and some also turned to the courts.
The Czech Government’s own Committee against Torture proposed introducing compensation in 2006. In 2009 the administration apologized for the illegal surgeries.
According to the law now in effect, victims have been able to apply for compensation since 2022. Those who underwent such surgery between 1 July 1966 and 31 March 2012 without deciding freely to do so and without information about the impacts of the surgery on their health are eligible to receive a one-time award of CZK 300,000 [EUR 12,000] from the state.
According to the League of Human Rights, the Health Ministry received more than 1,500 applications for compensation for illegal sterilizations as of November 2023.
