A printing press in St. Petersburg will rehire a transgender woman and pay her two years’ worth of lost income in Russia’s first known court case to acknowledge workplace discrimination against a transgender woman.
Anastasia Vasilyeva was fired from the printing press after 10 years of employment after changing her identification papers from male to female in July 2017. Her employer cited a Soviet-era list of 456 jobs off-limits to women which was originally introduced to protect women’s safety and reproductive health and updated by President Vladimir Putin in 2000.
A district court ruled that Vasilyeva was fired unlawfully and ordered her to be compensated 10,000 rubles ($154) in moral damages and 1.85 million rubles ($28,500) in lost wages, the St. Petersburg LGBT group Vykhod reported Tuesday.
Vasilyeva’s victory marks the first known case where a court has recognized workplace discrimination against a transgender woman in Russia, Vykhod said.
“This court decision will, in my opinion, give strength and confidence to transgender people defending their rights in Russia,” said Max Olenichev, a Vykhod lawyer who represented Vasilyeva in court.
Vasilyeva’s employer can appeal the ruling, according to Olenichev.
