One Step Backward

We were dealt a setback in Malaysia that will make a lot harder for trans people.

Malaysia: Court Ruling Sets Back Transgender Rights‘Oppressive and Inhuman’ Cross-Dressing Ban RestoredHuman Rights Watch
October 8, 2015

(Washington, DC) – In overturning a landmark ruling, Malaysia’s highest court has undermined the rights of transgender people in the country, Human Rights Watch said today. On October 8, 2015, the Federal Court reversed a lower court ruling that a state’s prohibition on “cross-dressing” was unconstitutional. On wholly procedural grounds, the Federal Court upheld Sharia laws prohibiting “a male person posing as a woman.”

The judicial decision is a serious setback in a four-year struggle by transgender activists to end arbitrary arrests of transgender women on the basis of discriminatory laws, Human Rights Watch said.
[…]
The court found that the three respondents – transgender women in Negeri Sembilan who had all been arrested and prosecuted simply for wearing women’s clothing – should have obtained judicial permission of a Federal Court judge when they commenced their constitutional challenge. Although a High Court judge had granted permission in November 2011, the Federal Court ruled that it had done so erroneously. The transgender women will now have to reinitiate the case, starting at the Federal Court level.

It could have been worst, at least it is a technical defeat on a procedural problem.