P v S and Cornwall County Council was a landmark case of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which extended the scope of sex equality to discrimination against transsexuals.

[1][2] The case concerned a United Kingdom (UK) trans woman, referred to as P in court proceedings, who was dismissed from her post after informing her employers that she was undergoing gender reassignment.

[9] In UK law this is reflected in the Equality Act 2010 where transsexuals can be barred from gender-specific services if that is "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim".

[10] P was a male to female transgender woman who worked as a senior manager in an educational establishment maintained by Cornwall County Council.

I am asking it to do so, however, in the profound conviction that what is at stake is a universal fundamental value, indelibly etched in modern legal traditions and in the constitutions of the more advanced countries: the irrelevance of a person's sex with regard to the rules regulating relations in society.

Whosoever believes in that value cannot accept the idea that a law should permit a person to be dismissed because she is a woman, or because he is a man, or because he or she changes from one of the two sexes (whichever it may be) to the other by means of an operation which - according to current medical knowledge - is the only remedy capable of bringing body and mind into harmony.

The principle of equal treatment "for men and women" to which the directive refers in its title, preamble and provisions means, as Articles 2(1) and 3(1) in particular indicate, that there should be "no discrimination whatsoever on grounds of sex".

In view of its purpose and the nature of the rights which it seeks to safeguard, the scope of the directive is also such as to apply to discrimination arising, as in this case, from the gender reassignment of the person concerned.

To tolerate such discrimination would be tantamount, as regards such a person, to a failure to respect the dignity and freedom to which he or she is entitled, and which the Court has a duty to safeguard.

The Court noted that Article 2(2) of the Directive, relating to occupations where the sex of the worker was a determining factor, could be used to justify such a dismissal, but that there was no evidence this was so in P's case.