An Australian court has run out of patience with Kirralie Smith. Smith, the CEO of the anti-trans group Binary Australia, spent three years fighting a finding that she unlawfully vilified two transgender women who play community soccer.
On July 24, 2026, the New South Wales Supreme Court dismissed her appeal.
She and her organization now owe $95,000 in damages, and they have to publish a court-approved apology and keep it pinned to the top of their social media accounts for three months.
The two women she targeted, Stephanie Blanch and Riley Dennis, were not public figures.
They were amateur athletes who wanted to play soccer.
The Claim That Started it
In early 2023, Kirralie Smith launched a campaign against trans women in New South Wales women’s football.
She posted photographs of Blanch and Dennis online, identifying them through their clubs, scoreboards, and other identifying details.
She called Dennis “a man appropriating womanhood.” And she claimed that Dennis had injured two cisgender women during a match badly enough that both ended up in the hospital.
That last part was the accusation that went viral.
It is the kind of story that gets screenshotted and reposted thousands of times, because it takes an abstract culture-war argument and turns it into a specific, visceral harm.
It also never happened.
When the case reached court, Smith admitted she had no evidence for the claim.
She could not say when the injuries occurred.
She could not say where.
She could not name the women who were supposedly hospitalized.
“I didn’t injure anyone. I didn’t hospitalize anyone,” Dennis told ABC News.
What the Campaign Looked Like
The posts were not the whole of it.
In 2023, Smith wrote on X that she wanted men to help her deal with “the bloke playing on the women’s team.”
Not long after, she traveled to the town of Wingham with a group of men impersonating trans women, filming them playing soccer as a joke at trans women’s expense.
Then men began showing up at Dennis’s games and filming her.
“All of a sudden I just felt like there were a thousand eyes on me and that every move that I made was going to be so scrutinized,” Dennis said.
She was not able to get a spot in the same league the following season, and she believes the attention is the reason.
Teams understood that signing her meant signing up for a political culture war.
“I’m not trying to be a political statement,” she said.
Blanch obtained an apprehended personal violence order — Australia’s version of a restraining order — against Smith, which was upheld on appeal.
A court described Smith’s conduct as a sustained campaign of belittling, harassment, and intimidation, and a judge called it objectively threatening and disturbing.
A First Under Australian Law
In August 2025, Deputy Chief Magistrate Sharon Freund found that Smith and Binary Australia had incited hatred and serious contempt against both women.
It was the first time a court had found someone liable for unlawfully vilifying a person for being transgender under New South Wales law.
Smith was ordered to pay $55,000 to Blanch and $40,000 to Dennis.
She argued she was engaged in protected political speech.
Freund rejected it, finding that Smith had misgendered and attacked the women in bad faith.
Smith appealed.
The Supreme Court dismissed it.
Justice Rigg found Smith had no right of appeal on most of the substance and, citing binding precedent from a 2012 Court of Appeal decision, rejected her argument that the vilification law violates Australia’s implied constitutional freedom of political communication.
That account comes from a conservative Australian outlet sympathetic to Smith, which is worth noting: even her allies’ coverage confirms she lost.
The judge made some minor changes to the original determination, but the finding and the damages stand.
“It Didn’t Pass, and it Just Got Worse”
Dennis did not want a court case. She clearly said so.
“My default reaction to all of this was to curl up into a shell and let it all pass,” she told Q News. “It didn’t pass, and it just got worse.”
“I knew that if I didn’t stand up for myself, that [people] would continue to target other queer and trans people who are just trying to play soccer or trying to play any sport.”
She now plays with the Flying Bats, a Sydney LGBTQ+ football club.
Heather Korkhill of Equality Australia said the ruling drew a line that had needed drawing: posts made in bad faith to incite hatred, serious contempt, or severe ridicule cannot be dressed up as political communication, no matter how much harm they cause (Now do America).
Why This Feels Different in America
The United States has no equivalent. There is no federal cause of action here that would let a trans athlete sue the person who invented an injury story about her and watched it circle the internet for three years.
That absence matters, because the American version of this campaign is running at full speed.
Bans on trans athletes have passed in more than half the states, and the arguments propping them up lean on exactly the kind of claim Binary Australia (Smith) made: a girl was hurt, a girl lost her spot, a girl was traumatized — details unspecified, sources unnamed, verification unavailable.
An Australian courtroom did what almost no American institution has been willing to do. It asked for the receipts.
Smith did not have any.
