Sall Grover, the CEO of defunct social media app Giggle for Girls, has announced she will leave Australia.
The announcement comes after the High Court rejected Grover’s application for them to review a case from the Federal Court that found she, and her company, had discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle when she banned for from using the app in 2021.
The court initially found that indirect discrimination had occurred, awarding damages of $10,000. Both parties appealed the decision and the Full bench of the Federal Court found that not only had indirect discrimination occurred, but Tickle had also been the subject of direct discrimination. They doubled the damages to $20,000 and also order Grover to pay Tickle’s legal costs that are estimated at being over $100,000. Grover will also be liable for her own legal costs.
With the High Court refusing to hear the case Grover has now conceded that her legal options have been exhausted. She’s told the Daily Mail that she now intends to leave Australia and relaunch the app in a country that has different laws.
‘I want to leave Australia because I will never forgive the government and I have no respect for the judiciary,’ Grover told the Daily Mail on Friday.
‘I won’t live under an authoritarian nonsense ideology.
‘But I am lucky that I have the potential to leave. The girls in school with boys in their bathrooms and sports competitions, the women in prison with male rapists, and every Australian woman who has had her sex-based rights abolished can’t leave.
‘I will fight with every Australian woman until our rights are restored.’ Grover said.
While the case has progressed through the court process Grover has become an speaker against transgender rights and recognition on a global level speaking at international conferences, making regular television appearances and authoring a prolific amount of social media commentary.
The legal win has been welcomed by LGBTIQA+ advocacy group Equality Australia.
“For decades, Australian laws have recognised that a person’s legal sex is not limited to the sex they were assigned at birth. Any other interpretation would deny the reality and existence of trans people,’ Equality Australia legal director Heather Corkhill said.
In a brief statement the High Court said they had looked into the application and determined that there was legal argument that
“There is no reason to doubt the Full Court’s construction of s. 7D (1) and (2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth). Any appeal dependent on the demonstration of error in the Full Court’s construction of those provisions has insufficient prospects of success to warrant a grant of special leave to appeal.”
