The High Court of Australia has handed down its decision in the long-running case of Tickle v Giggle, and in doing so, wrote the final sad chapter of a story that has run for more than five years. The Court refused Sall Grover leave to appeal, which left standing the Full Federal Court’s ruling from May this year that found she and her women-only app, ‘Giggle for Girls’, had unlawfully discriminated against a biological male who identifies as a woman. In its reasons, the High Court said there was “no reason to doubt” the lower court’s reading of the Sex Discrimination Act, and that any appeal had “insufficient prospects of success” to warrant a hearing. Ms Grover and her company were ordered to pay the other side’s costs on top of the $20,000 in damages already awarded. Let me be plain about what this means, because the legal language can obscure the plain reality. Under the law as it stands today, a woman can be found guilty of unlawful discrimination for maintaining a space exclusively for women.
A law written in 1984 to protect women and girls is now being used against them. How did we arrive here? In 2013, Parliament amended the Sex Discrimination Act. It removed the long-settled clear definitions of “man” and “woman” and inserted “gender identity” as a protected attribute, without properly safeguarding the single-sex spaces that generations of women have relied upon. Successive courts, right up to the highest in the land, have now interpreted those words exactly as they were written. They have done their job. The problem was never the judges. The problem is the words Parliament gave them to read. And that is precisely why the recent decision matters so much. Every judicial avenue is now exhausted. There is no higher court, no further appeal, no other case waiting in the wings. The courts have interpreted the law. Only the lawmakers can change it. This now rests entirely with Federal Parliament.
The remedy is not complicated, and it is not radical. The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 must be amended. A private member’s bill, the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sex-based Rights) Bill 2026, is already before the House of Representatives to define sex in the Act as biological and restore explicit, secure protection for services, activities and spaces that are for women and girls. This goes part way, however removing gender identity altogether from the Act would restore it completely to its original purpose, to protect real women from discrimination. Gender identity is legal fiction and should have never been legislated. Our task, yours and mine, is to now make the will of the people impossible to ignore. I want to be clear about the spirit in which we do this work. We are not seeking to strip dignity or protection from anyone. Every Australian is made in the image of God and is worthy of respect and compassion. But truth and compassion are not enemies.
Women and girls deserve to be truthfully defined in law, and they deserve certainty that a space set aside for them can remain exactly that, and it is not unkind to say so. It is simply true. Please pray for wisdom and courage in the members and senators who will decide this. Pray for the women, like Sall Grover, who have shouldered an enormous personal burden. And pray for softened hearts and clear thinking across our Parliament as this question comes before it. The courts have said their piece. Now the pen passes to Parliament, and Parliament answers to the people. Let’s make sure it hears us with clarity, so it legislates with clarity.
Michelle Pearse
Chief Executive Officer, Australian Christian Lobby.
Source: Australian Christian Lobby
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