We believe there are far reaching problems with the practical application of the Equality Act in relation to this definition - EHRC

Thanks for setting that out.

What I understood to be the single sex exceptions are the first two that you mention (Schedule 3, Paragraphs 26 and 27). These, as has been stated number of times on this thread by me as well as several other posters, have nothing to do with trans people, they exist in order to legitimise separate services for men and women.

The third exception (Schedule 3, paragraph 28) allows discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment. This comes under a heading of Gender Reassignment in the EA and describes how people with this PC should be treated in circumstances in which the single sex exceptions in paras 26 and 27 are applied. I would describe this exception as a gender reassignment exception (rather than a single sex exception) since it comes under this heading.

@IwantToRetire can you clarify which of the EA exceptions you are referring to when you talk about the SSE? It's not clear from your posts. If you refer to the actual paragraphs in the EA as Signalbox has done it could reduce the potential for misunderstandings.

“I want my trans followers to know..."

I'll bet you do, luv.

(In the interest of fairness to Daniel and Emma, here is the source of these quotes:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/jk-rowling-takes-shots-at-daniel-radcliffe-and-emma-watson-for-their-commitment-to-trans-rights#:~:text=%E2%80%9CTrans%20people%20are%20who%20they,you%20for%20who%20you%20are.%E2%80%9D )

But obviously they are welcome to believe they are women and/or pretend that they believe this.

The belief itself is no more a problem than any other belief that some people hold. The problem comes when it's accommodated as if it were fact.

Rant over 😁

Hopefully the Supreme Court will also hear Daniel Radcliffe reminding us that..

“Transgender women are women,” wrote Radcliffe. “Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either [Rowling] or I.”

...and Emma Watson helpfully showing us how we shouldn't be questioning the many Isla Brysons that pop up regularly in the news (as women... so might easily be missed):

“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” she wrote. “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”

Come on Daniel and Emma. Please do join in next week and help us see how the law would be unfair if it stopped all the Islas from being their authentic selves.

Yup.

Operation let them speak.

I'm hoping they'll campaign openly in public to transfer the nation's favourite rapist, Isla Bryson, to a female prison too. Obviously Labour would no doubt also be delighted to give Isla an immediate GRC with a 2 year cooling off period, as long as Isla can find any doctor to sign it off. After all, we wouldn't want to make it intrusive in any way and apparently there are no reasons to think anyone would game the system.

In fact it would be great to hear from Isla too in the case next week. It's all about hearts and minds. Nothing about us without us. Etc etc.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/trans-rapist-isla-bryson-launches-34023503

Please speak louder Isla.

Nicola, would you like to come back and join in too? You made so much sense last time.... 🤦‍♀️

https://x.com/PeterAdamSmith/status/1620051699900755970?t=wCPnlX40avZEC2Sw-AfIXQ&s=19

They said SNP ministers were now having to argue in court what they tried to avoid admitting during the passage at Holyrood of the self-ID legislation, that having a GRC “grants a man new rights in relation to women-only spaces”.

Yes, indeed. TRA organisations and adjacent ones needed to maintain the fiction that it was just admin, and through gritted teeth they would occasionally concede that in very narrow circumstances spaces could be limited to biological women only. But plenty of women on FWR always knew that the GRA changes the legal status of a male with regards to women only spaces, that it is a higher bar to exclude a male with a GRC than an MTF without or any other man.

So when the SG argued that GRC’s didn’t confer additional rights and amending the GRA to allow self ID was just an admin exercise they were lying through their teeth.

In a 40-page legal submission to the Supreme Court, they also said that it was unlawful for women-only clubs and associations to exclude biological males with gender recognition certificates (GRCs).

For example, its legal submission stated that it would be unlawful for a lesbian association to bar biological males with GRCs who were sexually attracted to women.

In an article for The Critic Magazine, feminist policy analysts Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn said that the Supreme Court case was a “legacy of Sturgeon’s time in office”.

They said SNP ministers were now having to argue in court what they tried to avoid admitting during the passage at Holyrood of the self-ID legislation, that having a GRC “grants a man new rights in relation to women-only spaces”.

https://archive.ph/pzCCB

As @PencilsInSpace put it on the Let's Go Back to 2007 thread:

Wooaahh! This was back in 1996 when they were otherwise still telling the government there were 5000. What the fuck!

It's point 3.1 of this 1996 report.

3.1 If we take the figure of 30,000 transsexuals in Britain6, we would expect there to be a minimum of 20 TS prisoners in the UK7. Transsexuals are believed to have the largest percentage of involvement in sex work of any UK community. Over half of Charing Cross Hospital's m-to-f transsexual clients had criminal records, though not all of these would have been in custody. We have talked to 18 prisoners/ex-prisoners already. Therefore we say 'minimum', because abused minorities are usually disproportionately represented in prison. There is clearly a great deal of self-censoring from transsexuals in prison; we know of no short term transsexual prisoners, in spite of the fact that most transsexuals are arrested for minor offences like prostitution. Either they are keeping quiet about their status, or the prison service is telling them to be silent. We can therefore only find out useful information from long-term prisoners.

web.archive.org/web/20060712015421/www.pfc.org.uk:80/legal/tsprison.htm

They thought it would only affect a tiny number of people.

The trans activist organisations claimed even in the late 90s that there were "30,000 transsexuals" in the U.K. so in spite of the figure presented to parliament (around 5k of both sexes) they already knew it would apply to more people (mostly men) than that.

Apologies if this link has already been added...

It looks like the Scottish government wants to make itself look daft again:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/23/equality-law-applies-to-pregnant-men-snp-supreme-court/

(This isn't behind a paywall ATM)

I imagine that that's going to take a long time to unpick in all the different organisations where it's muddled.

The law being stable and clear is a good start point.

What I'm hoping we'll see as a next step is public sector organisations being reminded of the Nolan principles.

Maya Forstater secured the legal protection to not hold the belief that we all have a gender identity when she won her case:

https://x.com/anyabike/status/1749777661855940901?t=mWrKEh2aY1JpR5IyqtJlhQ&s=19

Although the main publicity was about her "gender critical belief" that sex is immutable, it's just a way to turn reality into something that can be used in law. As far as I understand it, it turns the reality of biological sex into a philosophical belief in the same way that a court would never be able to rule that it's true that the earth is a globe. If flat earth activists went on a rampage insisting that we all accepted the earth was flat (shipping and aeroplane routes changed etc), courts would presumably only have the same option at their disposal i.e. ruling that globe earth belief is protected in law. Obviously it's never going to get that far. But here we are with the reality of sex.

The Nolan principles say that public sector organisations and their staff can't promote personal beliefs. So if sex immutability is a belief and the idea that we all have a gender identity is a belief that's stalemate. However, if it's bloody obvious that one is a fact and the other is a belief, that's a game changer IMO. And by bloody obvious I mean that biological sex is an observable reality. Science understands DSDs better than in the past too - every single one is sex-specific. There is no crossover and no such thing as intersex. Every human is either male or female, regardless of DSDs or not.

Hopefully this judgement will land on the right side of sensible and that will give organisations like schools and hospitals the kick up the bum that they need to stop promoting this belief and stop acting as if it's more important than sex.

In the meantime, hopefully more people will gain an understanding of what autogynophilia is.

Once we're no longer seeing gender identity belief promoted everywhere - because public sector organisations recognise it's unlawful under the Nolan principles - and the public recognises the dangers of self-ID in women's spaces, I hope we'll get a similar awareness as we have now about paedophiles. TW will have to accept that there is no way of telling the AGPs from the non-AGPs and will need to stay out of women's spaces because of this.

But it's going to be a long journey I think.

Edited to correct several typos.

I can't see transwomen not accessing these spaces and will/can anything be done to enforce the EA in these situations?

Each service provider would be responsible for enforcing their own service which is how things currently stand. So making it clear that toilets are separated by sex. But I agree that it’s unlikely to make much of a difference in relation to toilets. People will go where they please.

Can I just ask, if FWS win (I so hope they do), what happens to single sex women's toilets? I can't see transwomen not accessing these spaces and will/can anything be done to enforce the EA in these situations?

To add, I'm aware that there are parts of the EA that say a GRC has no impact but as far as I'm aware it's the Haldene judgement that turned that in to even more of a mess than it was before.

As far as I understand it, a win for FWS would mean that a) sex in the EA is biological sex and b) having a GRC that says something different has no impact on this.

In other words it ringfences sex and relevant and immutable, as far as the law is concerned i.e. that, as BetsyM00 says above....

If FWS win it will mean that the Equality Act has always referred to sex as a biological term. It would mean Lady Haldane misinterpreted the legislation

At the moment, it is a complete mess.

This web page explains that there is a SSE that allows for males to be excluded from female only spaces and a SSE that allows for exclusion on the basis of gender reassignment.

Unfortunately this only works if sex is clarified to be as per a (hopeful) FWS win. Otherwise it's still a complete mess because any male who has a GRC saying female would no longer be a male in the eyes of the law. So yes, SSEs are in there but are pointless if you can identify your way in to them via a GRC.

Schedule 3, paragraph 28 is the SSE that allows for discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment. It is specific to the issue of trans identified people accessing spaces of the opposite sex...

28(1)A person does not contravene section 29, so far as relating to gender reassignment discrimination, only because of anything done in relation to a matter within sub-paragraph (2) if the conduct in question is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
(2)The matters are—
(a)the provision of separate services for persons of each sex;
(b)the provision of separate services differently for persons of each sex;
(c)the provision of a service only to persons of one sex.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/3/paragraph/28

An example given in the explanatory notes to the Act is that of a group counselling service for female victims of sexual assault where the organisers could exclude a woman with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they judge that clients would be unlikely to attend the session if she was there.

It's a complete mess, isn't it. Unless this person has a GRC they are not classed as a "woman" if male. They are a man under the EA. Otherwise it could perhaps mean a woman who identifies as a man if they think she might make women think they are in the presence of a man?

This web page explains that there is a SSE that allows for males to be excluded from female only spaces and a SSE that allows for exclusion on the basis of gender reassignment. I'm wondering if this is why we are misunderstanding each other because it's possible we are talking about different aspects of the EA.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/1470/147010.htm

Exceptions allowing services to be provided only to women (or only to men)
The first two relevant exceptions (Schedule 3, Paragraphs 26 and 27) allow service providers to provide separate services for men and women, or to provide services to only men or only women in certain circumstances. The symmetrical nature of the ban on sex discrimination means without these exceptions it would be illegal, for example, to hold women-only sessions at a leisure centre or a new fathers’ support group at a nursery.

Exception allowing single sex services to discriminate because of gender re-assignment
The third exception (Schedule 3, paragraph 28) allows providers of separate or single-sex services to provide a different service to, or to exclude, someone who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. This includes those who have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), as well as someone who does not have a GRC but otherwise meets the definition under the Equality Act 2010.

Application of this exception must be objectively justified as a means of achieving a legitimate aim. An example given in the explanatory notes to the Act is that of a group counselling service for female victims of sexual assault where the organisers could exclude a woman with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they judge that clients would be unlikely to attend the session if she was there.

Schedule 23, paragraph 3 of the Equality Act 2010 also allows a service provider to exclude a person from dormitories or other shared sleeping accommodation, and to refuse services connected to providing this accommodation on grounds of sex or gender reassignment. As with paragraph 28 and other exceptions under the Equality Act, such exclusion must be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Example: a women-only support unit for women who have experienced domestic or sexual violence can be set up, even if there is no parallel men-only unit because of insufficient demand.

Under the Equality Act the only way that women only rape crisis or DV support can exist is because of the single sex exceptions. They are not just about trans people.

This is why some of us are questioning how this court case can change written law.

FWS are using the court system to challenge this because it is not only wrong, but as has become increasingly clear, impacting on women's sex based rights. So even if they win, will the law be re-written?

The court case cannot change the law and if FWS win the law does not need to be re-written.

If FWS win it will mean that the Equality Act has always referred to sex as a biological term. It would mean Lady Haldane misinterpreted the legislation.

If there were no single sex exceptions it wouldn't be possible to have female only anything. Men would be able to attend women's breastfeeding groups just because they fancied it.

If the GRA had not been intended to create the concept of someone being a "legal sex" as opposed to an actual biological sex, there would be no need to SSE.

This is not true and I'm not sure why you keep misrepresenting it. Single sex exceptions are needed because single sex spaces are needed. They don't revolve around trans issues.