The Supreme Court (SC) has deferred judgment on a petition brought by Jane Kaushik, a transgender woman teacher whose employment was allegedly terminated at two different schools in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh after her gender identity was revealed to the management.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan heard the case yesterday, December 10. In the previous hearing of the case, the bench issued a notice on January 2 of this year, asking the parties to file written submissions within two weeks, LiveLaw reports.

The bench, which included former Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, ruled that the notice should be served on the Union of India, state governments, and schools to obtain their responses on the matter.

It may be recalled that in the landmark Supreme Court judgement in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v Union of India & Ors case (2014), Justices KS Radhakrishnan and AK Sikri legally recognised the third gender, and held that individuals, including eunuchs and those from the hijra community had the right to legally self-identify as such.

The court also held that the absence of legislation recognising transgender persons as a third gender could no longer be used to discriminate against them in terms of equal chances in education and work.