Mona’s Ladies Lounge wins appeal in bid to continue barring men from entry

Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) has won an appeal in the state’s supreme court, in a bid to continue barring men from entering an installation known as the Ladies Lounge.

The installation was closed in April after Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal ordered the museum to start admitting men to the female-only space, upholding a Sydney’s man’s complaint that the museum had discriminated against him on the basis of gender.

But on Friday, the supreme court found the Ladies Lounge qualified for an exemption from the state’s anti-discrimination act under a section that allows discrimination if the intention behind the action is to promote equal opportunity for a group of people who are disadvantaged or have a special need.

“The Ladies Lounge can be seen as an arrangement to promote equal opportunity by highlighting the lack of equal opportunity, which generally prevails in society, by providing women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged by the refusal of entry to the Ladies Lounge by men,” Justice Shane Marshall said in his decision.

The tribunal had made several errors of fact and law, including the mischaracterisation of what the Ladies Lounge was designed to promote and how that was intended to be achieved, he said, quashing the 9 April decision and sent the case back to the tribunal to be reconsidered.