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A lesbian activist group seeking to exclude transgender women from events said it will continue its push for an exemption from discrimination laws after what it called a \u201cwin\u201d in the Federal Court.<\/p>\n
The Lesbian Action Group applied in 2023 to the Australian Human Rights Commission for a five-year exemption from Commonwealth sex discrimination laws to allow them to hold public events for \u201clesbians born female only\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Lesbian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5bbbe3cd5aa58ee8530972aedccb15a9ebcb2961.jpeg\")
Lesbian Action Group committee member Carole Ann, pictured in August 2023.Wayne Taylor<\/p>\n
The laws make it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity in the provision of goods, services and facilities.<\/p>\n
The commission rejected the application for the exemption in October 2023, and the Administrative Review Tribunal affirmed the decision in January last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a decision on Wednesday, Federal Court Justice Mark Moshinsky set aside the tribunal\u2019s decision<\/a> and ordered it to consider the case afresh after finding a \u201cmaterial\u201d error in its reasoning.<\/p>\n The group welcomed the judgment on social media platform X.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have won the right to have the judgment from the tribunal set aside and be permitted to go back to the tribunal to continue our fight for an exemption to the Sex Discrimination Act to be able to have a public gathering for women just like us and only us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe fight isn\u2019t over and the law hasn\u2019t changed but today was a major win for us,\u201d the group said in another post.<\/p>\n Moshinsky said the group \u201csought the exemption so that it could hold regular public events for lesbians born female only\u201d, starting with an International Lesbian Day event in St Kilda, Melbourne, in 2023.<\/p>\n The commission denied the exemption three days before the event was scheduled.<\/p>\n Moshinsky said the tribunal had taken \u201ctoo narrow a view of the scope\u201d of the available exemption power in its 2025 ruling.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile an exemption may be granted in circumstances that could be described as \u2018positive discrimination\u2019, the power to grant an exemption is not limited to such cases,\u201d Moshinsky said.<\/p>\n \u201cAn exemption may be granted which serves other interests notwithstanding that it permits a person to engage in acts of discrimination on the ground of sex etc that would otherwise be prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n Katie Green, CEO of the Inner City Legal Centre in Sydney, advocates regularly for the rights of trans people. She warned that lobbying to exclude trans women was an \u201cown goal\u201d for the LGBTIQ community as a whole.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we see a winding back of trans rights in Australia, it\u2019s going to be lesbian and gay rights that other powerful lobby groups will come after next,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the ICLC we do work with lots of younger groups that are so much more open about their identity.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many younger trans women and lesbians are in fact attracted to one another because of the shared struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n She was concerned the litigation, and cases like it, created a culture in which people felt emboldened to aim \u201chateful and often violent\u201d behaviour towards the trans community.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many ICLC cases, big and small, revolve around the rights of trans people to exist in public spaces,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens next? Then we have things like toilet bans potentially being next on the agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Sydney woman May May, who is trans and attracted to women, said the views of the Lesbian Action Group were not representative of the wider LGBTIQ community.<\/p>\n She was \u201cdoubtful that any trans women engage in that space at all\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this group is mostly an outlier within the queer community,\u201d May said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you love women, there will be trans women you love and there will be cis women you love.\u201d<\/p>\n Having pockets within the LGBTIQ community attacking trans women was ultimately \u201cself-defeating\u201d, she said, because it created an environment in which the queer community as a whole could be marginalised.<\/p>\n Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Representatives](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/75ec1f9affd65fa69405dd0601d741de3d90ae21.jpeg\")
Representatives from the Lesbian Action Group and Women\u2019s Rights Network Australia outside the Federal Court in August 2024.Sitthixay Ditthavong<\/p>\n![\"Jack](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/f9c4e6f15093d5420f2ea8fe8237b5a605deb273d4c0e0a9ced26f35f2896c8e.png\")
Jack Gramenz<\/a> is a breaking news reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 15, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-608811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}