Supreme Court For Women Scotland

What is needed is for the EA to be amended.

What is needed is to fully repeal the GRA.

The EA is about saying there are "legal" women for various purposes and actually women who are allowed under the SSE to only be biological women.

The EA says nothing of the sort. "Legal women" is one interpretation, it's not something in the EA itself.

The GRA says that a GRC acquired "gender" becomes their gender "for all purposes," and clarifies that means their sex will change to the opposite sex.

That's the point of contention here, which definition the EA relies on, biological sex or biological sex plus opposite sex with GRCs.

So far the decision has been that a GRC changes sex except for the exceptions. But that's not very workable.

Sorry not time to read all comments and this may have already been said.

The article is really stupid and this focus on lesbians seems to be an angle various legal people who are leeching on this are going on about.

A lesbian is someone who is physically attracted to another biological woman.

The EA is about saying there are "legal" women for various purposes and actually women who are allowed under the SSE to only be biological women.

The court case is about the first category. That allowing trans women to be considered women (remember the case was about women on boards) are (as in sports) having the advantage of male privilege undermining actual women achieving equality.

The court is ruling on the law as written.

And they may say as the EHRC have said its badly written and a mess but yes it does create to types of women.

Whether or not it could be legally challenged I dont know.

But there is absolutely nothing to stop MPs whether bipartisan or majority party re-writing the law.

And it is a great shame that Kemi Badenoch never got to finish the work she started on this.

I fear that if the case in lost Labour will revert to what it always says never mind girls you've still got the SSE which we created specially for you.

And as a discussion on LGB Alliance facebook page pointed out, associations which are not legal entities can be women only (as proved by Bristol Student Feminist Group) so obviously lesbians can form associations.

I know I say this repeatedly the problem actually is that too many peopel have accepted that what Stonewall says is right.

The problem is the men who feel entitled to challenge women.

The problem is that not enought groups, and vast employers like the NHS bother to implement the SSE.

This article is a totally meander off the real issue.

Which is that as written the sex class of women are the only protected characteristic who have to allow those who aren't part of the that sex class to idenditify into it.

I think many wonder whether using the law would help resolve the problem with the EA and how allowing for the GRA has underminded sex based rights.

Nothing will stop entitle men from continuing to try and undermine women's rights.

What is needed is for the EA to be amended.

But I doubt Labour will ever do this.

And I doubt there are enough MPs who support sex based rights who would form a cross party group to achieve this.

The real problem is the law makers.

The opportunists are the men who are deliberately using the badly written EA to try and terrorise women.

Presumably if one but not the other has a certificate, the two men are in a heterosexual relationship.

ECHR is part of the Council of Europe which is also captured

https://www.coe.int/en/web/sogi

point of pedantry, the ECHR is not an EU institution, is it? That's why we're still in it...

Agree, the EU institutions seem pretty captured.

It is lesbians most of all - women in general could still have women-only shelters, RCCs, communal public toilets, but not book clubs or walking groups. Lesbians could not separate themselves as lesbians at all.

I dunno whether going to the European Court of Human Rights (I'm not the only one who hates that its acronym is so similar to that of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, right?) would be a sensible strategy, given that it's not really clear which way it would go and there's already a fair amount of sentiment that we ought to withdraw from it anyway. I think I'd rather argue for a change in British law and the sovereignty of Parliament.

It's rights of association which will be affected by a judgement along the lines of ScotGov's or EHRC's arguments. Lesbians most of all. Effectively ceasing to exist as a group, as AR explains so eloquently.

It is not lesbians most of all. It is women effectively ceasing to exist as a group. The rights of lesbians simply follow from that.

If the ruling goes against against FWS then it does give an opportunity to go to the ECHR. That would mean finally the case for women is finally heard there and a win there would have huge implications in other countries too. A lose there would be even more devastating though.

Most of those cases are/ought to be a slam dunk anyway - even a GRC can't confer the right to be included in a women's RCC therapy group, for example. Males can lawfully be excluded on the basis of Sex or GR. And it's established at first instance Trib level that failure to provide women-only services at all, or adequately, discriminates directly against the individual and indirectly against all female service users/employees.
It's rights of association which will be affected by a judgement along the lines of ScotGov's or EHRC's arguments. Lesbians most of all. Effectively ceasing to exist as a group, as AR explains so eloquently.

My consolation is that I imagine the Labour Party are even more nervous than I am. If the ruling goes against women then I think it would be pretty hard for them to continue insisting that all that's needed are some tighter guidelines (not that I'd put it past some of them.) It would be a baptism of fire for Jacqui Smith, that's for sure

So do we think imminent means today (noon?) or Monday, then? Presumably not at the weekend?

They always seem to be released about 10/11 am

I think it might be even worse than you suggest, Hermyknee - it may be a case of "we have always been at war with Eastasia".

I still can’t get my head round this.

If it goes the wrong way then don’t the definitions of man and women change. It is biblical in proportions surely? 2025 would have to be ‘year 0’ in that all medicine, medical literature, textbooks, in fact any written word, had to clarify what woman and man meant in a different way. Children would have to be taught that anything broadcast or written pre-2025 was where woman meant an adult human female. And after 2025 it didn’t.

Am I missing something about how fundamental this is?

So do we think imminent means today (noon?) or Monday, then? Presumably not at the weekend?

Given the explanation above (thanks WeeBisom) I guess there's even less point in reading between the lines - if she knows what the ruling will be, Akua presumably couldn't change her position from the one presented by the organisation she's associated with, lest that be interpreted as a comment on the ruling she's not supposed to comment on. (If I were she and had anticipated the situation, I'd have written the article before I knew the ruling.)

And that’s the problem. Organisations have been stonewalled to the hilt who have told them that operating on the basis of self ID is fine

Operating on the basis of self ID is not lawful though.

The definition of a woman in the EA isn't actually a key factor in many of the current cases, I don't think - as most organisations (like the Brighton support service) operate on the basis of self-ID anyway.

In most cases the law as it is currently understood (by the courts) is sufficient of a slam dunk. The only limiting factor for most people suffering discrimination from these organisations is the cost of bringing a case and the wish to move on in life. Winning a legal case can often be a phyrric victory.

@CarefulN0w cutting benefits may be unpopular with the Labour champagne socialists but it is less unpopular with working class adults than you may think. There is a very strong work ethic with some labour voters.

Reform is a big threat to Labour, a Reform/ Conservative agreement not to contest certain seats a bigger threat.

Labour really cant afford to piss off women too but misogyny in the party is so strong it it wont recognise that.

If FWS win, that should make the other legal cases slam dunks shouldn't it? Because if I have understood it correctly it's not a change in the law and nothing is being applied retrospectively. Whatever they say the law is now is what it was when the rape support in Brighton, NHS, countless employers etc were breaching it. So the best defence they could have would be "we did it but we didn't know we were wrong to do it". Which isn't much of a defence and shouldn't wash.
Is that a correct interpretation or am I too simplistic?

I know there is also the reasonable person argument - would a reasonable person that thought that X would cause Y..? In which case you'd have would a reasonable person think that a man becomes a woman just by saying he does? Which surely most people would say no to.

Logic went out the door when the ECHR decided that a man had the right to ‘privacy’ even though everyone could see he was a man.

As am I, it seems like the only logical outcome to the point I can't imagine it would go any other way. Although, that being said, logic hasn't exactly prevailed until now but hopefully this is a turning point.