Sall Grover is devastated. The Australian High Court, to which the founder of the Giggle for Girls app had appealed last May's ruling, has slammed the door in her face. Special leave to appeal was denied; under current law, the appeal deserves no hearing. Roxanne Tickle, the transgender man who was denied entry to the women-only app, has won for the third time. The law (the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, paradoxically created to protect women, then amended in 2013 to also protect gender identity) is now set in stone: men can become women, and sex is not a purely biological fact. It's the end of women-only spaces.
The case we talked about here And here was born in 2020 when Grover had launched Giggle, an app just for women. In 2021, Roxanne Tickle, born male and recognized by law as a woman, logs into the app. Grover sees the profile and realizes it's a man, removes it, and refuses to readmit it. Tickle files a complaint, first to the Human Rights Commission and then to the Federal Court. In 2024, the judge rules in his favor: indirect discrimination. Essentially, he was discriminated against for not looking sufficiently feminine. Grover appeals, and so does Tickle, demanding direct discrimination, and being removed from the app for being transgender—and perhaps even more money. In May 2026, the court rules in his favor again.
In June, Grover appealed to the High Court, and today the final decision was denied: there's no reason to reconsider the interpretation of the Sex Discrimination Act. Without changing the law, there's no way out. The ball will then be in Parliament's court.
Despite yet another unsuccessful legal battle, which cost over a million euros in legal fees and for which an international crowdfunding campaign had been launched, Grover announced he will not give up the fight. "Men are not women.".
The Giggle vs. Tickle case demonstrates that when sex becomes secondary to gender by law, the consequences for women and our rights are very harsh: unisex spaces are imposed by judicial means. And it is very difficult to go back.
Martha Wolf
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