Lesbian group wants to overturn ruling so it can exclude bisexual and trans women

A lesbian group in Australia is seeking to overturn a ruling that denies them the right to exclude bisexual and transgender women from their public events.

In 2023, the Lesbian Action Group (LAG) – linked to anti-trans group LGB Alliance Australia – had their request for a five-year exemption from the country’s anti-discrimination laws denied the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

The AHRC said that granting the exemption would lead to the further discrimination of trans people.

Under the 2010 Equal Opportunity in the state of Victoria, temporary exemptions to anti-discrimination laws can be granted if it can be proven that the exclusion would “help the act’s goal of promoting equal opportunity” and the proposed action was “a reasonable limitation on the right to equality set out in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities”.

The group’s application, as laid out on the LGB Alliance website, sought to “run lesbian-only events again” as “we are tired of living in the shadows and being underground”.

They went on to claim: “We are really concerned that young lesbians have no community or lesbian-only spaces in which to socialise and meet potential partners. They have not had the benefit older lesbians have had pre-1990s and are finding it hard to find lesbian community when everything LGBTIQ+ is compulsory mixed sex. We know young lesbians who are finding it a major issue.”

At an Administrative Appeals tribunal, LAG lawyer Leigh Howard cited the case of Melbourne’s Peel Hotel, a gay venue, which was granted an exemption under state law to refuse entrance to heterosexuals and lesbians and, after changes to the exemption, to anyone who upset the “character” of the venue.

“That is a really good example of how these exemptions are supposed to work,” Howard said, according to The Guardian. “May we please have one as well?”

The case is the latest in Australia on the topic of gender identity and single-sex spaces.

Last month, trans woman Roxanne Tickle won a landmark case against female-only social media app Giggle and was awarded Aus $10,000 (approximately £5,000/$6,600) plus costs after a judge found she had been indirectly discriminated against.

The app’s chief executive Sall Grover and her legal team said that sex is biological and claimed that Tickle was discriminated against on the grounds of sex rather than gender identity, which, they argued, was lawful because the app excludes males.

However, justice Robert Bromwich ruled that the category of “sex” is “changeable and not necessarily binary”.

The tribunal’s decision is expected in December.