The Taoyuan District Court on Friday ordered a former dean and a head military instructor at Chang Gung University to pay damages for using discriminatory language against a transgender student.
The former dean and the instructor must pay NT$80,000 and NT$120,000 respectively for the remarks they made to the plaintiff at a school meeting in 2017, the presiding judge wrote in a summary ruling.
The student had applied for accommodation in the school’s female dormitory, but her request was denied by the defendants, the ruling said.
Photo courtesy of Chang Gung University
The dean’s comparison of the plaintiff to cross-dressers and the instructor’s remark: “I am a Christian and God created only two sexes,” are in contravention of the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法), it said.
Military instructors are partly responsible for promoting gender equality on campus, a duty the defendant neglected, the court said.
Authority figures using their power to impose binary views of gender on a student is a breach of the right to personality under the Civil Code, it said.
By asking the plaintiff if she is a “man or woman under the law,” the military instructor failed to promote gender equality, which is part of the duties of campus military instructors, it added.
The school should not be fined for denying the plaintiff a spot in the female dormitory, as it later set up separate “gender-friendly” accommodations in 2018, the ruling said.
Experts have testified that separate accommodations for transgender students cannot be truly equal and the court acknowledges the validity of the testimonies, but demanding that the school change overnight is not reasonable, it said.
The school declined to comment on the ruling, only saying that it is not appropriate to speak on behalf of retired faculty and staff.
The ruling can be appealed.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS