Vancouver activist Morgane Oger wins ‘landmark’ transgender rights decision

By Tessa VikanderStar VancouverWed., March 27, 2019

VANCOUVER—A Vancouver human-rights tribunal has ruled there’s no room for public debate about whether transgender people are who they say they are.

Well-known trans advocate Morgane Oger filed the complaint against Christian activist Bill Whatcott after he distributed flyers disparaging her for being a trans woman.

The 104-page ruling, which goes into detail about the types of discrimination trans people face, is a win for trans rights in B.C. and across the country, said Susanna Allevato Quail, Oger’s lawyer.

“This decision is really a landmark decision in establishing the scope of protections under the human-rights code for transgender people,” she said.

In defence of the flyers, Whatcott had argued that he was contributing to important public debate about the morality of being transgender. The judgment rejects this argument, Quail explained.

It is no longer “a legitimate subject of public debate, whether or not it’s OK to be transgender or whether transgender people are real,” she said.