The High Court of the United Kingdom has affirmed the right of a 4-year-old boy to live as a girl.

As reported in the media, the facts of the case are a bit complicated and all names have been removed from reports. It appears that a foster couple was sending their their four-year-old son to school in a girl’s uniform. Social workers accused them of being too quick to recognise the child (“H”) as suffering from gender dysphoria. They complained that the couple had “actively encouraged” the child and threatened to remove the child.

Unhappy, though, that their child-rearing intuitions had been questioned, the couple brought the case to the court to seek affirmation and exoneration.

Justice Williams obliged. He described them as “attuned and careful” parents and said that H had not been harmed by a “complete transition into a female occurring at a very young age”.

However, the judge omitted some facts about the family. They have another child, “R”, aged 13, who socially transitioned at 7-years-old. H is adopted and transitioned at 4; he is now 6. Another foster child (age unknown), who was with the family for three and a half years and left in 2007, also had gender identity issues.