C-13/94 P v S and Cornwall County Council [1996] ECR 1-2143

• Plaintiff was sacked by CCC after informing her bosses that she was undergoing gender reassignment and wished to come to work as a woman.

• Directive 76/207 forbids discrimination based on sex.

ECJ

• Held that since the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of sex constitutes a fundamental human right, the scope of the directive cannot be confined simply to discrimination based on the fact that a person is of one or other sex.

• It must extend to discrimination arising from gender reassignment, which is based, essentially if not exclusively, on the sex of the person concerned, since to dismiss a person on the ground that he or she intends to undergo, or has undergone, gender reassignment is to treat him or her unfavourably by comparison with persons of the sex to which he or she was deemed to belong before that operation.

• To exclude transsexuals from the directive would be to fail to recognise the dignity to which they are entitled.