'Giggle for Girls' app owner intends to appeal loss in landmark gender discrimination case

Exclusive: Banning a transgender woman from a female-only app constituted unlawful discrimination, a judge has found in a landmark gender-identity case.

The Giggle for Girls app and its founder Sall Grover were ordered to pay $10,000 in compensation and legal costs to a user kicked off the women-only platform.

The compensation amount is a sliver of the $200,000 Roxanne Tickle had sought, half of which was based on a dismissed claim for aggravated damages.

The Federal Court found Tickle did not face direct unlawful discrimination on that basis. But her exclusion from the app for not looking "sufficiently female" amounted to indirect identity discrimination.

Tickle was blocked from the Giggle app in September 2021 on the basis of her gender, despite a birth certificate listing her as female, the court was told during a series of often-heated hearings in April.

Tickle had undergone gender-affirming surgery and hormone treatments, identified as a woman to family, friends and employers, and used women's change rooms and shops.

Grover, who intends to appeal the decision, sat down with A Current Affair.

You can watch the whole interview at the top of the page.

Tickle said she hoped the decision was healing for trans and gender diverse people.

"I brought my case to show trans people that you can be brave, and you can stand up for yourself," she said in a statement.