Transgender Man Wins Work Discrimination Case... Sort of

In what is being described as China’s first court case involving transgender discrimination in the work place, a judge in the southwestern province of Guizhou has ruled that a trans plaintiff was illegally fired from his job, but not necessarily because of his gender identity.

“We found this a little bit of a shame,” said Huang Sha, the lawyer for the 28-year-old plaintiff, known in the state news media only as “Mr. C.”

Mr. C was dismissed from the Ciming Health Checkup Center in Guiyang in April 2015 after the center’s human resources manager allegedly complained about him dressing like a gay man and for looking too “unhealthy” to work for a health checkup company.

A year later in March 2016, C filed a complaint with his local labor arbitration committee seeking compensation and a formal apology from the company for wrongfully terminating him.

While the committee was able to compensate the former employee for about $61, they refused to demand an apology from the checkup center. Mr. C then linked up with Huang to bring the case to court.

The court held its first hearing in June, but adjourned once Huang demanded an examination of two documents the company had submitted as evidence that Mr. C had been fired not because of his trans identity, but because he missed work and failed to dress in accordance with company policy.

The case resumed in December when experts from the Center of Forensic Science at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law concluded that the documents failed to prove that the center had dismissed Mr. C on grounds permitted under current labor law. The court ordered the company to pay the plaintiff nearly $300 in compensation.

However, the court maintained that there was no proof that Mr. C’s termination had anything to do with his being transgender and did not demand the company to issue an apology to him.

“This has demonstrated how low the cost of breaking the law is for employers,” Mr. Huang said. “This is why the current job discrimination situation is so grim.”

He added: “This case also highlights the problem of ‘invisible discrimination,’ because employers can always claim they fired people for reasons other than the one they’re accused of.”

Though the win wasn’t necessarily the victory he was hoping for, Mr. C admits that his case was about visibility more than anything else.

“At first I was worried about being insulted by the public,” he told the Washington Post, “but I made the decision to stand up, because somebody needs to speak up for this group.”