Lawyer Says She’ll Sue Over Italy’s Separated Gender Voting Lines
September 26, 2022Trans people may have been forced to stand in the line of their sex assigned at birth, effectively outing them if they voted. Now, a lawyer in Italy is speaking out about the country’s rarely-used gender-divided voting system.
After Italy's elections – which resulted in the election of the far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – attorney and LGBTQ+ activist Cathy La Torre spoke out about separate lines for men and women at the polls, as well as separate lists of voters based on gender, as LGBTQ Nation reports.
Although the law was passed in 1967, generally, voting places in Italy aren’t divided on the basis of gender. Election authorities decided to use the 1967 law at this weekend's vote. For many Italians, it was the first time that they stood in an election line based on gender. There has not been an official explanation as to why this was implemented. Some have suggested that it was to handle waits of over an hour.
“Gender-segregated queues are a violation of privacy of all those who are making a gender transition,” La Torre told the Guardian. She said that she can’t be a plaintiff in a case to challenge the law because she’s not trans, but “I am a lawyer and I can launch a battle to change this law.”
“Thousands of trans people are forced to stand in a queue different from their gender and therefore forced to let everyone present know that they are trans people,” she continued, something that opens them to discrimination.
“And if you ask the authorities why, the answer is always the same: it has always been like this. And for those who tell me that these are trifles, I say feeling humiliated is never a trifle.”
La Torre asked her polling station to note her belief that having separate men and women lines for voting is a “violation of privacy rights and personal dignity.” Police accepted her request but one poll worker called her “crazy.” She’s now suing him for discrimination.
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