Two American states, Oklahoma and North Dakota, are considering legislation aimed at prohibiting schools from catering to a student’s identification as an animal. The draft Oklahoma House Bill 3084, introduced in January, would ban “students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species” and require parents to collect students behaving like furries. If the parents don’t, the bill says, “animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student”.
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We have not got to the point of legislating these issues in Australia.
Victorian schools have been required to uphold and respect the “diverse needs” of students “in policy and practice” since October 2023 under the revised Child Safe Standards. Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act protects “the personal sense of the body … and other expressions of gender” including dress, and personal references, but accommodating a student identifying as non-human is something else entirely. Victorian laws also recognise schools may set and enforce reasonable standards of dress, appearance and behaviour for students which could prohibit the wearing of tails, animal ears and the like.
When it comes to workplaces, I was recently asked by an employer in the tech industry whether anthropomorphism was an illegal fetish-based activity after a job candidate listed it as a hobby on their CV. It is not, and evidently, for the most part, sexual kinks are not part of the furry lifestyle.
As with schools, there is no legal protection requiring employers to accommodate furries or furry behaviour in the workplace, either under the Sex Discrimination Act or the Fair Work Act . Research nonetheless indicates the prevalence of furries in some industries, including science, engineering and tech.
There are not yet any cases in the Fair Work Commission in which a furry has challenged a dismissal based on their self-identification status. However, I can readily imagine a situation where an adult is fired for wearing a tail under their suit and alleges unfair dismissal.
Would it not be harsh to fire someone for something that does not relate to their performance or conduct and cannot be seen? It would be like firing someone for an unconventional tattoo. But, employers have a legitimate right to protect the corporate reputation from damage, so dismissal might be considered fair if animal-related dress exposed the employer to public ridicule or reputational embarrassment.
In any case, if you show up at most job interviews dressed as a cat or wolf, plenty of employers will quickly toss your CV into the bin. For now, being a furry is relegated to fandoms and dress-up. It is not a protected attribute in schools or workplaces. But, who knows what the future of work might bring.
Paul O’Halloran is an employment law partner at law firm Dentons Australia.
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