Can a person successfully petition for a change of name and sex after a sex change operation?

Facts: Rommel filed a petition for change of name and sex before RTC Manila praying that his name  in his birth certificate be changed from "Rommel" to "Mely" and his gender from "male" to "female". He alleged that he is a transexual, that is, “anatomically male but feels, thinks and acts as a female.” In 2001, he underwent sex reassignment surgery in Thailand.

Ruling: "While petitioner may have succeeded in altering his body and appearance through the intervention of modern surgery, no law authorizes the change of entry as to sex in the civil registry for that reason. There is no special law in the country governing sex reassignment and its effect.

The changes sought by petitioner will have serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy consequences. First, even the trial court itself found that the petition was but petitioner’s first step towards his eventual marriage to his male fiancé. However, marriage, one of the most sacred social institutions, is a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman. One of its essential requisites is the legal capacity of the contracting parties who must be a male and a female. To grant the changes sought by petitioner will substantially reconfigure and greatly alter the laws on marriage and family relations. It will allow the union of a man with another man who has undergone sex reassignment (a male-to-female post-operative transsexual). Second, there are various laws which apply particularly to women such as the provisions of the Labor Code on employment of women, certain felonies under the Revised Penal Code and the presumption of survivorship in case of calamities under Rule 131 of the Rules of Court, among others. These laws underscore the public policy in relation to women which could be substantially affected if petitioner’s petition were to be granted" (Silverio vs. Republic of the Philippines, G.R. No. 174689, October 22, 2007).