In recent days, a British labor court ruled that a woman was discriminated against when the employer only set up a ‘gender neutral’ bathroom in the workplace. The court noted that that multigender toilette was inappropriate because of the risk of encountering a man at the urinal.
Ms. Karen Miller won a sex discrimination lawsuit in 2020, but the board appealed the decision. In its ruling released early last week, the Employment Appeal Tribunal rejected the Earl Shilton Council’s appeal, finding that Ms. Miller had not been provided adequate facilities.
“The treatment was less favorable than for men,” said Judge James Taylor, who presided over the Labor Court. “A woman who is at risk of seeing a man using urinals obviously does not have the same risk as a man who sees another man using urinals… The plaintiff was not provided with adequate sanitation facilities for her needs because of the risk of running into a man using urinals and the lack of a hygienic bin,” Judge Taylor added.
This case should be a wake-up call to employers and service providers who seem to have forgotten that most people prefer to go to the bathroom knowing that their privacy is protected. The ruling is an important precedent and applies the well-established principles of equality law of not treating one sex inherently less favorably than the other. As the British judiciary has had to come to terms with the sexually different realities of males and females, it is now to be expected that even those employers most stubbornly committed to the insane ideology of ‘gender neutral’ restrooms will come to terms with it.
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