Japan’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that restricting a transgender woman’s use of toilets at her workplace was “unacceptable”, a decision that may help promote LGBT rights in the only G7 nation without legal protection for same-sex unions. The ruling, the first by Japan’s highest court on the work environment for LGBT individuals, comes in the wake of a series of mostly positive regional court rulings about same-sex marriage and after the passing of a law to promote understanding of the LGBT community. An official at the economy ministry who was assigned male at birth sued because she was only allowed to use women’s toilets several floors away from her office, instead of closer ones. A Tokyo District Court ruled in 2019 that these restrictions were unlawful, but the decision was reversed in 2021 by the Tokyo High Court.