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.
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