Judge rejects transsexuals' bias claim against pub

A discrimination claim by five male-to-female transsexuals who were ejected from a pub after one of them used the ladies' lavatory was rejected by a judge yesterday.

The group, backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), claimed John Gawthorp, 53, landlord of the Red Lion pub in Thornby, Northamptonshire, treated them unfairly on the grounds of their sex. But Judge Charles Harris QC, sitting at Oxford County Court, disagreed, ruling that the claimants, only one of whom had undergone sex-change surgery at the time of the incident in March last year, were, in law, biologically men. He said they were perceived as men dressed as women.

Jeannie Drake, of the EOC, said: "The commission supported this test case because we believe that trans-people should have the same right as anyone else to go into a pub."