Australian court rules that removing a transgender woman from a women-only app was discrimination | World News
A women-only app discriminated against a transgender woman by removing her from the platform, an Australian court ruled in a landmark case.
The Australian Federal Court found on Friday that Roxanne Tickle, a Transgender A New South Wales woman was subjected to “indirect gender discrimination” when she was banned from social networking platform Giggle for Girls in 2021.
She had sued the platform and its founder, Sally Grover, in 2022 for unlawful discrimination based on gender identity in their services, claiming that Ms Grover had blocked her account after seeing her photo and “mistaking her for male.”
Judge Robert Bromwich stated in his ruling that while Ms Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, her claim for indirect discrimination had been successful because she had to “have the appearance of a cisgender woman” to use the Giggle app.
He ruled that Giggle for Girls and Ms Grover must pay Ms Tickle general compensation of $10,000 (£5,142), in addition to her costs.
He did not rule in favour of Ms Tickle’s demand for an apology “because it is pointless and inappropriate to demand an apology which is inevitably insincere”.
Image: Reuters
In this case, it was the first time that the Federal Court – Australia’s second highest – made a judgment on gender identity discrimination since the Sex Discrimination Act was amended in 2013, which introduced new protections in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex.
Ms Tickle called the verdict “healing” and was quoted as saying outside court: “Transgender and gender diverse people face so much hate and bile simply because of who we are.”
Meanwhile, Ms Grover said on X: “Unfortunately, we got the verdict we expected. The fight for women’s rights continues.” She has launched a fundraiser to appeal the decision.
Ms Tickle has been living as a woman since 2017, underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2019, is legally recognised as a woman and is registered as female on the Queensland Register.
According to the ruling, Giggle required users to upload a selfie to register for the app, which was then analyzed by artificial intelligence to verify users as female.
Although Ms Tickle was identified as a woman by the AI software when she first signed up to use the app in February 2021, she later noticed that her access to Giggle had been restricted and later revoked.
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Ms Tickle claimed Ms Grover removed her after seeing her photo, but the judge added there were “no compelling reasons” to suggest the app’s founder “knew who Ms Tickle was or what her gender identity was”.
Judge Bromwich said the evidence did not suggest that Ms Tickle was excluded from Giggle directly “on the basis of her gender identity”, although it remained possible that this was the real but unproven reason.
However, he said Ms Grover’s views on sex and gender were “clear at the time of the trial”, adding that when asked whether she would accept a transgender woman as a woman if she had undergone medical gender reassignment surgery and was legally recognised as such, she “would not consider that person to be a woman”.
“Ms Grover made it clear under cross-examination that she makes no distinction between people who were assigned male at birth, even if they have since become transgender women, and stated that they are men,” he added.
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Judge Bromwich also noted Ms Grover’s behaviour during the trial when she “laughed at a demeaning caricature of Ms Tickle during the course of her oral evidence”.
“Your explanation that it was funny in the context of the courtroom was obviously disingenuous,” he said. “It was offensive and derogatory and had no legitimate place in the defendants’ case.”
