Tribunal verdict prompts sex rule change (Yorkshire Post)
Tribunal verdict prompts sex rule changeDuncan Gardham THE Government has introduced regulations to prevent transsexuals from joining the police after a discrimination case against the West Yorkshire service was won by a woman who used to be a man. The woman, who had a sex-change operation in 1996, applied to join the police the next year, telling them from the outset that she had been a man. West Yorkshire police accepted her application, she took a physical fitness test as a woman and passed all the recruitment exams. Her fellow recruits were unaware that she had been a man. But the then Assistant Chief Constable Greg Wilkinson asked for legal advice and was told there could be problems if the woman had to make searches beyond a suspect’s outer clothing, since regulations required officers doing such searches to be of the same sex as the suspect. Early last year he decided to reject the application and the woman went to an employment tribunal. The tribunal, which referred to the woman only as “A”, ruled in March that a police prosecution was unlikely to fail just because the search had been conducted by a transsexual. It also decided there was a negligible risk of indecent assault allegations. It said that accepting West Yorkshire Police’s logic would mean that no transsexual could ever be in the police and that would deny them equal treatment. Miss A said this showed there were no longer any “no-go” professions for transsexuals, but West Yorkshire Police insisted she would not be joining them. Copyright © 1999 Yorkshire Post Newspapers |
