Transsexual awarded €35k for discrimination

A DECISION to award a transsexual worker more than €35,000 for discrimination she endured at work has been hailed as “groundbreaking”.

In a decision released by the Equality Tribunal today, First Direct Logistics were found to have discriminated against Louise Hannon — who was diagnosed with gender identity disorder and is a male-to-female transsexual — on the grounds of gender and disability.

The Equality Officer awarded Ms Hannon €35,422 and also ordered the company to pay the complainant interest at the courts rate on the award.

Chairwoman of the Equality Authority Angela Kerins said she was pleased the Employment Equality Acts were robust in defence of the rights of transsexual people.

“Transsexual people are born into a society which is not structured to cater for their own identity. The journey undertaken by transsexual people to recognise their own identity, as being different from their assigned identity, involves a process and decision making that is both courageous and beyond the capacity of many to fully appreciate.

“With the diagnostic progress made in recent decades to recognise this disorder, it is fair and essential that society assists transsexual people to make this journey by removing as many obstacles for discrimination as possible,” she said.

Ms Hannon had been employed by First Direct Logistics Ltd as a business development manager from January 2007, having previously worked with the company in a self-employed capacity for about five years.

She claimed that since she had informed her employer of her true identity and her need to live in this identity, her work conditions were made so intolerable that she was ultimately constructively dismissed as a result of her transition from male to female.

In its decision, the tribunal found that to gain “real life experience the person must be able to live their life continuously in the other sex without the need to revert to the birth sex”.

It also found that this applied to the workplace and that there is an obligation on employers to accommodate such “real life experience”.

The tribunal found that the plan formulated by the company to allow the transition from male to female was clearly a unilateral approach that had not been fully explored with Ms Hannon.

It was also satisfied that requesting Ms Hannon to switch between a male/female identity whenever the respondent felt the need for it constituted direct discrimination on the gender and disability grounds.