Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle has won a novel gender identity case brought against a women’s-only social media app and its owner after she was excluded from the platform. Federal Court Justice Robert Bromwich found Giggle for Girls and its owner Sall Grover had “indirectly discriminated” against Ms Tickle and ordered her to pay the applicant $10,000 and her legal costs.

Justice Bromwich said. He also found that “sex is changeable” after Ms Grover argued it was not. Ms. Tickle, who underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2019 and is now designated as female on her birth certificate, claims she was discriminated against on the grounds of gender identity by Giggle for Girls and Ms Grover when she was excluded from the women’s networking app.

It is the first time a case alleging gender identity discrimination has been heard by the Federal Court following changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013, which made it unlawful to discriminate against a person based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or intersex status.

This predicament is the largely unanticipated outcome of Gillard-era changes to the Sex Discrimination Act to include “gender identity” as a ground for claiming unlawful discrimination. This was defined as “the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person (whether by medical intervention or not), with or without regard to the person’s designated sex at birth”.

If last week’s Federal Court decision between Roxanne Tickle and Sall Grover goes unchallenged, then officially sex is no longer anchored in biology, at least for the purposes of the federal Sex Discrimination Act.

Tickle is still a biological male with X & Y chromosomes no surgery can change his biological makeup.