LGBTQ rights in Costa Rica
rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Costa Rica
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights in Costa Rica have evolved significantly in the past decades. Same-sex sexual relations have been legal since 1971. In January 2018, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights made mandatory the approbation of same-sex marriage, adoption for same-sex couples and the removal of people's sex from all Costa Rican ID cards issued since October 2018. The Costa Rican Government announced that it would apply the rulings in the following months. In August 2018, the Costa Rican Supreme Court ruled against the country's same-sex marriage ban, and gave the Legislative Assembly 18 months to reform the law accordingly, otherwise the ban would be abolished automatically. Same-sex marriage became legal on 26 May 2020.
Human Rights Watch has described Costa Rica as "committ[ed] to [equal] rights" and an "inspiration for other countries [in Central America]". Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited in employment and other areas, and transgender people are permitted to change their legal gender on official identity documents to reflect their gender identity, including driver's licenses, passports, and ID cards.
Legality of same-sex sexual activity
Homosexuality first became classified as a crime during Spanish rule. After gaining independence, it remained a crime until the liberal presidency of Tomás Guardia (1870-76, 1877-82).
“LGBTQ rights in Costa Rica” enters the record as rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Costa Rica. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what LGBTQ, rights and Costa can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1626293. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2018, 2020 and 1870.
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This entry incorporates text from “LGBTQ rights in Costa Rica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.