Judge rules in favor of transgender woman in landmark discrimination suit

Aug. 23 (UPI) -- A transgender woman in Australia has won a legal battle in a discrimination case against a social media company, after a judge ruled Friday the app's administrators wrongly banned her from the platform.

Roxanne Tickle filed the lawsuit, alleging she was banned in 2021 from the social media platform Giggle for Girls, a networking platform for women, court documents show.

Tickle, who is from the Australian province of New South Wales, is transgender and had gender reaffirming surgery in 2019.

Tickle named the app along with founder and CEO Sall Grover in the suit, claiming she was blocked from using the social media platform because the company said she was a man.

Joining the app required a person to submit a photo of themselves, verified first by gender verification software powered by artificial intelligence. Grover then had final say, according to the lawsuit.

Federal Court of Australia Justice Robert Bromwich ruled Grover had violated the country's Sex Discrimination Act in the landmark case. The judge awarded Tickle around $6,800 and legal costs. Tickle had been seeking approximately $135,000 in damages.

Lawyers for Grover had argued the term "sex," as defined in the law, was something unchangeable from birth.

"These arguments failed because the view propounded by the respondents conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years. Those...cases established that on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable," Bromwich wrote in his ruling.

However, the judge ruled the discrimination was indirect because was more likely barred from using the app because she didn't look "sufficiently female."

The Giggle for Girls app shut down in 2022.