In May, Richard Simmons filed a libel suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against National Enquirer and Radar Online over several stories published by both outlets. They claimed he was transitioning to female. He claimed they were lying. Now a ruling in the case is imminent, and though Simmons will likely lose, it could prove an unlikely legal victory for transgender-rights advocates. In what might be the first—and certainly the most high-profile—defamation lawsuit to ask whether labeling a person as “transgender” is harmful enough to qualify as libel, Judge Gregory Keosian, of the Los Angeles Superior Court, is set to rule that it is not.

In the suit, Simmons claims that Mauro Oliveira, a former assistant, has blackmailed him for years and fed the stories of his transition to the outlets. They printed them in summer 2016 under headlines such as “Richard Simmons: He’s Now a Woman!” The National Enquirer wrote that Simmons has “slowly transformed into a female with breast implants, hormone treatment, and medical consultations on castration” and that he is “now living as a gal named Fiona.” Interest in Simmons was especially elevated at the time considering he had not appeared in public since 2014; his disappearance became the subject of a buzzy podcast, Missing Richard Simmons, which debuted in February of this year.

Simmons claimed that the Enquirer “cynically calculated” that, in order to sue, he would have to choose between batting down a false claim and appearing “to maintain that there is something wrong with transitioning from one gender to another.” In a tentative ruling (the final ruling is due in a few days), Judge Keosian has determined that the latter is the more harmful concern here. Keosian writes that being called transgender, however falsely applied, does not meet the criteria for libel because, in the words of California law, the claim doesn’t “expose any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation.” In other words, transgender is not a shameful designation, and Keosian won’t risk making it one by ruling in Simmons’s favor.

Transgender, then, will be treated the same way that race has been traditionally treated before the law—that is, that misidentifying a person’s race is not inherently libelous. “Here, the court notes that neither a medical condition, nor race, nor sexuality are a perfect analogy to the issue we address today, but acknowledges that being transgender shares several important characteristics with all three,” Keosian clarifies. “Being transgender is an issue that often (although not always) requires a medical diagnosis and medical intervention. Like race, being transgender is an immutable characteristic. Although there is no connection between homosexuality and being transgender, both characteristics relate to sex and gender.”

Judge Keosian added, “While, as a practical matter, the characteristic may be held in contempt by a portion of the population, the court will not validate those prejudices by legally recognizing them.”

Both the National Enquirer and Simmons are claiming the moral high ground on behalf of trans rights. The former maintains that being labeled transgender should not be considered shameful. Plus, in a statement posted to its Web site at the time of the filing in May, the National Enquirer wrote, “Our story was based on credible sources who were in Mr. Simmons’ inner circle. The photos provided to The ENQUIRER are real—and speak for themselves. We stand by our reporting about Mr. Simmons, and intend to vigorously defend this lawsuit and win public vindication of our reports.”