FSU's Giggle Intervention

The Free Speech Union of Australia (FSU) has made an application seeking leave to intervene in the case of Giggle v Tickle. The underlying case is Sall Grover's appeal against Justice Bromwich's decision in Giggle last year, where Sall had a damages award made against her, including for laughing at an exhibit displayed in Court.

To obtain leave to intervene, we have to raise a point of law that is not being presently argued for by the parties. We are proposing to run two points of law:

Threshold for discrimination. Given Australia's ever expanding discrimination laws, including a range of 'hate speech' laws, such as that recently passed in Victoria, it is important to ensure that relatively trivial complaints cannot be brought by activists. One concern is that Justice Bromwich set the threshold of harm for a finding of discrimination too low. There is a considerable body of case law outside of Australia which applies a 'de minimis' principle to discrimination claims, which protects against relatively trivial claims. In this case, Tickle was not even interested in using Sall's online platform. We therefore contend that the case should not have been allowed to proceed on that basis.
Protection of voluntary online communities. Section 39 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) disapplies the entire act to voluntary bodies. We contend that the Giggle platform was no more than a support service to a voluntary community of biological women who wished to exclude biological men, and thus amounted to a voluntary body. By confirming this, we hope to prevent further litigation of this nature, allowing individuals to freely run closed online communities without the fear of having to defend an expensive lawsuit.

Due to the importance of this work, we have been able to secure legal services at heavily discounted rates. This said, our application to intervene has still led to FSU having incurred considerable legal costs, as we have had instruct both a Barrister and a Solicitor. We are grateful for support and donations so we can run this intervention application. Alternatively, you can become a member and join us.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Our intervention increases the likelihood of Tickle losing, by providing additional grounds by which the Court can decide that Justice Bromwich's decision was incorrect.

The Court will determine the other issues raised in the normal way, including the points on biological sex and the constitutional issues.

Whilst we don't propose to directly argue on those wider points, the fact that we drawing attention to the wider community concern about Bromwich J's decision could have some influence on the Court's overall approach. Ultimately a large proportion of the Affidavits submitted in Giggle were concerned with Free Speech and Freedom of Association issues.

This is hard to precisely predict. For example, the Court might order that we supply written submissions instead of appearing at the hearing, if so the costs will be lower.

As a minimum, we expect this to cost the FSU at least $15,000. If we are required to appear at the hearing, the legal costs will considerably increase, especially given the matter has been listed for four days.

The more we raise, the more effectively we will be able to intervene.

The Federal Court has not yet provided an online file for the appeal. Sall Grover is running her own crowdfunder, which also provides the wider details of her claim. You can also read our affidavit.

FSU will be submitting further written submissions on the 15 May 2025. The other parties will then get to reply to these by 23 May 2025. The Court will then decide what steps to take with our application to intervene. We will let everyone know the outcome in due course.