NSW Court Confirms Stating Biological Fact Is "Vilification"
The NSW Supreme Court has upheld a $95,000 penalty against a women's rights advocate for pointing out that two players in a women's football competition are male, confirming that biological reality is now a legal liability in NSW.
What The Court Actually Ruled
Kirralie Smith, spokeswoman for the women's rights group Binary Australia, has lost her Supreme Court appeal against a vilification finding that began with a simple observation: two players competing in NSW women's community football, Riley Dennis and Stephanie Blanch, are male.
Smith's posts, published across 2023 and 2024, pointed out that Dennis was the leading goal-scorer in a women's competition and described Blanch in blunt, unambiguous terms. The NSW Local Court ruled in August 2025 that this met the legal test for unlawful vilification under the state's Anti-Discrimination Act, the first such finding based on transgender status in NSW history. In December 2025, ordered Smith and Binary to pay $55,000 to Blanch and $40,000 to Dennis, publish a court-approved apology, and keep it pinned to their social media for three months. Smith appealed the decision.
On 24 July, Justice Belinda Rigg dismissed the bulk of Smith's appeal, finding she had no right of appeal on most of the substantive findings and rejecting her argument that the vilification provisions breach the implied constitutional freedom of political communication, citing a 2012 Court of Appeal precedent. The $95,000 bill stands. Smith says she is weighing a further appeal to the High Court.
The Science Smith Was Simply Repeating
What actually got Smith sued was not an opinion. It was a description of the biological advantages of being a man playing in women’s sports.
Peer-reviewed research published in the journal Sports Medicine found the performance gap between males and females diverges sharply at puberty, typically anywhere from 10–50% depending on the sport. The gap is the widest in events built on muscle mass and explosive power. The same review found that a year of testosterone suppression in transgender women produces only a mere ~5% reduction in lean muscle mass and strength, a fraction of the male-female gap it's meant to close.
A more recent analysis in Drug Testing and Analysis reached a similar conclusion: even after full, sustained testosterone suppression, roughly 85% of the original male physical advantage remains. Skeletal differences, height, limb length and hip and shoulder width are all fixed. Therefore, these advantages cannot be reduced through hormonal suppression.
None of this is fringe science. It's the same body of research that has already pushed World Rugby, and federations in cycling, swimming and athletics toward sex-based, not testosterone-based, eligibility for female competition. Smith wasn't making an extraordinary claim when she said a male athlete would have a physical edge over the women he was playing against. She was describing what sports scientists have been publishing in journals for years.
Also read: Women at Risk from Male ‘Trans’ Player as AFL goes Woke
A Precedent That Should Worry Every Australian
The most alarming part of this case isn't the dollar figure. It's the legal test that produced it.
Under section 38S of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act, a statement is unlawful vilification if it has the capacity to incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule — regardless of whether the speaker intended any such thing. One lawyer following the case summed up the practical effect: the bar for incitement is set so low that the test doesn't turn on whether the speaker actually meant to provoke hatred, only on whether the words could theoretically have that effect on someone. Smith's own stated purpose, raising concerns about fairness and safety in women's sport, was accepted by the court as genuine. It didn't matter.
That is not a standard that protects women. It's a standard that hands a heckler's veto to anyone offended by the truth. If the law can punish an observation as severely as it punishes genuine hate speech, then no parent, coach, journalist or advocate in NSW can safely discuss the integrity of women's sport.
What You Can Do Now
Family in Danger believes women and girls deserve single-sex sporting categories grounded in biological reality — and that no one should face a five-figure penalty for saying so out loud. Cases like this one show why anti-discrimination law needs to drop “gender identity” as a protected category and emphasise the reality of biological sex.
If you want to see a change and end this gender ideology madness from persecuting more people, then sign our petition to change federal Anti-Discrimination law.
References
1. Hilton, E.N. & Lundberg, T.R., “Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage,” Sports Medicine, 2021.
2. Handelsman, D.J. et al., “Biology and Management of Male-Bodied Athletes in Elite Female Sports,” Drug Testing and Analysis, 2025.
3. Coverage of Smith v Blanch and Smith v Dennis, NSW Supreme Court judgment of Justice Belinda Rigg, 24 July 2026.