Am I right in thinking having a GRC is now totally irrelevant?

@loveyouradvice

the while issue here was caused by the self identifying ability . This allowed pervs to just declare they are trans .

it was a real fuck up by the trans community

in know why as the resources are so hard to access to get a proper diagnosis of gender dyphoria

There's no protected characteristic relevant to men who do not transition.

There is: the protected characteristic of sex.

I think that's right about gender reassignment. However a man dies have the protected characteristics of being male and is being disadvantaged compared to a female comparator, so I think would have a claim for discrimination here.

Or course if the scheme was single-sex then it could be justified under the EA. But given the judgement, it would not be considered so.

Have you read the judgment? What it says is that section 9(1) still applies to change legal sex and gender, but that change does not bring people who are biologically male within the definition of a "woman" for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.

I am sure most of us would like it if the SC had said that GRCs have no effect and legal sex is a nonsense concept and things should always be determined in accordance with biological sex in all contexts, but that's not what it says 🤷‍♀️

I am not sure about this. The protected characteristic of gender reassignment only goes one way - i.e. it only applies to those who are transitioning (or have transitioned or intend to). There's no protected characteristic relevant to men who do not transition.

The supreme court was very clear here - legal sex cannot be changed. A GRC does not change one's legal sex.

This I believe is correct - so groups like the academic Athena Swan being open to 'women and people who identify as women' are discriminating against men who don't identify as women. It's reasonable in law to have an employer initiative to help women because of historical and current discrimination. Women and transwomen do not share a protected characteristic so there is no justification in including transwomen to the detriment of other men. You could have a separate scheme for trans people but I suspect you'd have to exclude non-binary people as non-binary has no legal status in the UK.

Gaining a GRC is still the point where one is considered to have changed sex in the eyes of the law for most purposes.

Section 9(1) of the GRA provides:
Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).
Although this is subject to any other law and the exceptions later in this the GRA.

FWS argued that section was spent and no longer had any effect, but they failed on that point. My numbering has gone wrong but it's paras 99-100 of the judgment.

1. The appellant submitted that the usefulness of section 9(1) was now spent because the problems encountered by trans men and trans women that the legislation was designed to remove have all been removed by other legislation. The pension age for men and women has now been equalised and gender distinctions in many social security benefits have been removed. Civil partnerships and marriage can now be validly entered into by same sex as well as different sex couples. Given the diminished relevance of the GRA 2004 to the rights of transgender people, the appellant argues that the rule in section 9(1) is also largely spent.

1. We do not accept that. Although many provisions of the GRA 2004 have been overtaken by other legislative developments, we consider that the Act continues to have relevance and importance in providing for legal recognition of the rights of transgender people. This recognition of their changed status has practical effects for individual rights and freedoms (including, for example, in the context of marriage, pensions, retirement and social security) but also in recognising their personal autonomy and dignity and avoiding unacceptable discordance in their sense of identity as a transgender person living in an acquired gender. We also agree with the Scottish Ministers that the GRA 2004 is concerned with relationships between private parties as well as between the transgender person and the state.

The judgment yesterday was just about whether the definitions in the Equality Act should be read as including certificated sex - and it was held that it should not. But GRCs are still likely to be relevant in other contexts.

For example, I think that they may still ask for legal sex (ie including certificated sex) when collecting census data. That issue is not an Equality Act issue on my understanding and so the definitions therein don't come into it.

nope - a man with a GRC is a man legally and biologically. They could claim sex discrimination if someone perceived them to be a woman and discriminated due to perceived sex, but any man can claim that - just as anyone can claim racial discrimination based on perceived race. How you prove any of that I really don't know, I'd be very interested if there have been any successful court cases in this area.

The trend in GRC applications will be very interesting to watch - I predict it will fall drastically.

I wonder if men can now claim gender reassignment discrimination if for example a job role is open to males who identity as woman but not males who don’t!

But if an opportunity is created to encourage more women into software engineering, and this opportunity is open to women and to people identifying as women, then a man excluded from this opportunity can legitimately claim that he is being discriminated against.

NAL but My understanding is that the protected characteristic protects transgender people not to be discriminated against in terms of housing, employment etc but it does not give them the right to be treated as the opposite sex. In other words a trans woman for example cannot use sex discrimination to be treated the same as a woman.
the comparator test in a scenario for a trans woman is a biological man. So a trans woman under gender reassignment cannot be treated worse than a man in the same situation. The comparator isn’t a woman.
that’s how I understand it
and vice versa for a trans man. Under gender reassignment they cannot be treated worse than a woman in a scenario. The legal comparator for trans men are women

Surely the protections are the other way around?
So transmen can't be excluded from women's spaces as that would be discrimination based on gender reassignment. (But could be from sport due to drugs rules).

And for jobs where sex doesn't matter eg software engineer you still can't discriminate against trans people.

If a TW with a GRC is advantaged by some female-specific provision, i.e. the provision is effectively for women without a GRC and males with a GRC... How does that sit with the Equality Act?

IMO it does not. The GRA is incoherent law, and incompatible with both the EA2010 and normal common sense. It is now also a patently discriminatory one, as it affords some men privilege over others, based upon the possibility of some men holding a certificate. But until a man does what women have done, ie take the issue to court to force classification on its ridiculousness, nothing will change.

IMO the GRA must be retracted.

I don’t see the point of a GRC if you can’t ask to see it. That aspect has never made sense. I have a first aid certificate. If I’m a first aider at an event and someone asks to see my certificate I’ll show it otherwise how do they know I’m not lying. That’s the point of these pieces of paper. A certificate you keep secret is no difference to not having one. You should need a GRC to change the gender marker on any official documents including driving license and medical records and even then medical records should just show you transitioned and show biological sex for safety. Genital surgery should be required to get a GRC. Everyone else is just cross dressing which is fine but doesn’t change your sex or mean anything. It’s just clothes.

I think that particular advantage is gone because the judgement said one problem with accepting transwomen as women (and transmen as men) is that it makes two (or 3) subsets: transwomen with a GCR, transwomen without a GRC and men. Men who were not trans would be disadvantaged, which is discrimination because of (lack of) gender identity.

If that is the NI case, the court case found against the person ordering the cake. Religious belief is a protected characteristic. After all, you would not ask a Jewish bakery to make a Hamas-themed cake, would you? They would be within their rights to tell you to FtheF off.

Will the welfare/tax/pension bit hold up now? If a TW with a GRC is advantaged by some female-specific provision, i.e. the provision is effectively for women without a GRC and males with a GRC... How does that sit with the Equality Act? I'm confused now!

Yes. Still the right to get a birth certificate in the opposite sex, to marry/get a civil partnership as the opposite sex, to be treated as the opposite sex for the purposes of any welfare, pension or tax laws that differentiate on sex (though I am not sure there are many anymore).

There have been a few, particularly employment and prison based, provisions that were somewhat limited to GRC holders but most “single-sex” provision that allowed trans people to be treated as the opposite sex has been provided on the basis of self-ID anyway. Not many places tried to distinguish between GRC holders and non-GRC holders (my guess is because of the difficulty in doing so). So while the SC ruling will likely get rid of a lot of mixed-sex provision masquerading as single-sex, it doesn’t seem like much of what will be “lost” to trans people was provided on the basis of a GRC anyway.

It does still allow the holder to get a birth certificate in the sex of their acquired gender. This hasn’t changed. And I think that’s been its biggest benefit since gay marriage became legal and pensions were equalized. A form of validation and a way to obscure a previous identity. So I think the reasons for getting a GRC were never huge (hence so few people applying) and they really haven’t changed much.

If you're referring to the Asher's bakery case, the Supreme Court held in favour of the bakery.

Excluding someone from women's spaces or services because they don't meet the definition of a woman is literally the point of the single sex exemptions in the Equality Act.

This is a good way to look at them:

I reckon that the Government's reforms to the GRA will be dead.

Even before this they were pushing reforms that nobody was asking for

I think this is still very murky while the GRA exists, because it will still be an offence for staff in the public sector to disclose someone's natal sex. "It is an offence for a person who has acquired protected information in an official capacity to disclose the information to any other person."

While the GRA is in place, GRCs still have weight. A GRC still makes you legally a woman (just not legally a biological woman).

It would have to be something that's outside the scope of the Equality Act, because that's what the Supreme Court have ruled on, however high passions may run.