Tasmania’s Supreme Court has quashed a tribunal decision that would have forced a museum to allow men to enter its women-only “Ladies’ Lounge”.
In March, New South Wales’ man Jason Lau brought an anti-discrimination case against Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) after being denied entry to the lounge last year, and initially won in Tasmania’s appeals tribunal.
But that decision has today been quashed by Acting Justice Shane Marshall, and sent back to the tribunal for reconsideration.
He found the lounge was designed to promote equal opportunity for women generally, and so it could lawfully exclude men.
Acting Justice Marshall found the discrimination experienced by women was not just confined to the past, but occurs today as well, and so women should be able to create an “exclusive space” to create a “flipped universe”.
“The correct approach … is to ask first whether the arrangement’s purpose was to promote equal opportunity,” he wrote.
“On the evidence, the unequivocal answer is ‘yes’ because the Ladies’ Lounge was designed to provide women with an exclusive space where they receive positive advantage as distinct from the general societal disadvantage they experience.”
In his ruling, Acting Justice Stephen Marshall said the tribunal erred by claiming the lounge addressed only past disadvantage experienced by women.