S.7 of the Equality Act 2010 defines a person as having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. People Management report that Ms Taylor who is a gender fluid person, had worked for Jaguar Land Rover for almost 20 years as an engineer, previously presenting as male. Taylor began to identify as gender fluid in 2017 and started dressing in women’s clothing, which provoked insults and abusive jokes from colleagues. Taylor also suffered difficulties using toilet facilities. The ET accepted Taylor’s legal representative’s argument that the Government had referred to a gender “spectrum” (a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine) during parliamentary debates about the Act and found that the protection under the Equality Act for those undergoing gender reassignment extended to non-binary and gender-fluid individuals, and went on to uphold Taylor’s harassment, discrimination and constructive unfair dismissal claims. LGBT+ charity Stonewall said the tribunal ruling was a “milestone in recognising the rights of non-binary and gender-fluid people to be protected from discrimination.”
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