The Federal Court of Australia has struck down an appeal from Sally Grover, the founder of the women’s-only app Giggle, over a ruling from a lower court which found that the app had discriminated against a trans-identified male who goes by the chosen name Roxy Tickle.
In 2024, a judge ruled that Giggle "indiscriminately discriminated against" Roxanne Tickle, a trans-identified male who attempted to join the app that was created to make a safe space for women online. To join, users must either be biologically female or be determined to be female through the submission of a photo. Tickle’s photo was flagged as not being female. Tickle sued after being blocked from the app in 2021. Justice Robert Bromwich awarded Tickle $10,000 in that ruling, and Grover appealed.
The full court of the Federal Court of Australia on Friday upheld the lower court’s decision, dismissing the appeal and stating that Grover and the app "engaged in unlawful direct discrimination against the respondent, Ms Roxanne Tickle, on the ground of her gender identity, contrary to" Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act of 1984. The court said that the plaintiffs violated the act by excluding Tickle from the app "on the basis of her gender-related appearance," refusing to restore the account, and "thereby treating Ms Tickle, who is a transgender woman, less favourably than a person designated female at birth seeking access to the Giggle App."
The plaintiffs have been ordered to pay Tickle $20,000 within 60 days, as well as Tickle’s costs to appeal up to $50,000. Grover wrote in response to the ruling, "I am absolutely devastated. Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia. It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us. But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow & men will still not be women."
She wrote, "I honestly think that if you are claiming men can be women you are humiliating yourself, willingly making yourself out to be an idiot," and told a reporter shortly after the ruling in regards to the judges, "how embarrassing for them."
Grover and Giggle were also ordered to pay the court costs of Tickle’s cross-appeal, up to $50,000. Tickle had filed a cross-appeal in February seeking at least $30,000 in general damages and at least $10,000 in aggravated damages. Tickle argued that the lower court had erred in ruling that Giggle’s exclusion of the trans-identified male was indirect discrimination, and that it was instead direct discrimination. The Federal Court of Australia upheld the cross-appeal.
Women’s Forum Australia head of advocacy Stephanie Bastiaan wrote, that in 2013, the government "amended the Sex Discrimination Act- stripping the meaning out of 'man’ and 'woman' and adding gender identity as a protected attribute to be pitted against biological sex. Today's outcome is proof of what those amendments have done: women are left with no meaningful rights or recognition under the Sex Discrimination Act - a bitter irony, given that protecting women was the very purpose of the Act under our commitment to CEDAW."
