No details about the man’s identity or the trust in question can be published due to legal restrictions covering the case being heard in the Court of Protection.
Both the man’s family and his GP support the application, and it is claimed he lacks the capacity to decide for himself.
The case follows other instances in which judges have been asked to rule on whether a person with learning difficulties should be sterilised without their consent.
In 2011 an NHS trust and a council applied to sterilise a woman with learning difficulties at the same time as she gave birth to her child by caesarean section.
