Good Law Project suing the EHRC and Bridget Phillipson - letter before action

Why are these men so hell bent on accessing women's spaces and the women in them? Its all profoundly disturbing. In order to support these men you must either be a raging misogynist who feels women shouldn't have any rights or be allowed to maintain their own dignity or you must actually believe that somehow a man, a fully adult male was somehow due to some administrative error by god or the stork born into the wrong body, in which case you are a raging idiot.

I can't face reading all that verbiage at the moment, but I did see a bit about trans rights (TW, naturally) being thwarted by BTP suspending their policy of allowing trans officers to search the opposite sex.

That Maugham and his vanity project could even think of seeing men not being allowed to (intimately) search female detainees as a breach of men's rights is utterly unbelievable.

I've seen this before, of course, having knocked around here for a few years now, but to see it expressed in such a document is quite frightening.

Is he an actual lawyer? I’m sorry but he could have made an effort to look a bit more professional. He looks like one of the blokes you get in a pub waffling about their next big win

Minister for Women and Equalities will be asked to choose whether she abandons her statement that trans people must use the toilet of their “biological” sex or defend it as consistent with the UK’s human rights obligations.

Well that’s easy peasy to ‘defend’.

Single sex toilets are the best choice for Article 2, the Right to Life. Article 2 means ‘the Government should take appropriate measures to safeguard life by making laws to protect you and, in some circumstances, by taking steps to protect you if your life is at risk. Public authorities should also consider your right to life when making decisions that might put you in danger or that affect your life expectancy.’

The only government toilet design that can have door gaps is a single sex design. With the door gaps you can see if someone has collapsed on the floor. You can see how many people are in the cubicle. You can see if anyone’s life is in danger. It is right that governments have said that single sex toilets should be prioritised as they are the safest.

If there’s any ambiguity, then the design becomes private. All mixed sex, universal, or gender neutral designs do not have door gaps.

The safest choice for any person is to use a single sex public toilet but it is particularly important for woman and children (due to assaults) and those with medical conditions.
This completely aligns with Article 2 The Right to Life.

So they're focussing on toilets? A man's right to pee alongside women? Will they be using their killer argument that as women can take their male babies into women's toilets that means that middle aged trans identifying men MUST be allowed to join the woman? 🤔

Well that video has me convinced 😆

Jolyon has posted a video here for his fans: https://x.com/GoodLawProject/status/1923371695210893724

The GLP describes itself: 'unlike many others it is both willing and able to litigate' 😄

I think that tells us all we need to know about their chances of success.

Is the GLP's chance of winning in the room with us now?

As demonstrated, in repeated cases, you can take all this into court, explain it, go through it, write whole judgments on it, and it still isn't understood when things don't go as they are identified as going. It will just be explained that not enough/the right people were there to emote, that everyone is transphobic, that words meant something other than they were written....

this is the core issue of trying to engage using reality and process with a movement rooted in aversion to reality and personal facts. I don't know what the answer is really. Other than repeatedly putting it legally back behind the boundaries and huge costs to deter mindless followers, and accepting there are going to be endless teenaged type ranting about how nobody loves them or understands them.

Thank you @Hoardasurass
In that case I’ll just pull up a chair and get my 🍿

The Good Laugh Project!

This should be fun.

No. A snowball has a better chance of surviving a trip to hell than this has of surviving a dismissal hearing

There still seems to be a belief that enough Sad Stories will mean that women's and gay rights will be destroyed in law.

posting this so people can compare and contrast comments on this side, from the other side, and see what the chances might actually be of this working:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1ko1425/good_law_project_bringing_a_legal_challenge_to/

No the whole horror is that this law would require men to actually respect women and gay rights.

In ways that present really inconvenient boundaries.

What they mean is breach of man rights not human. They never consider the breaching of womens rights an issue.

I can hear the crunch of Michael Foran, Peter Daly, Naomi Cunningham and Akua Reindorf sharpening their pens as they murmur oh ffs..

Thanks for posting this. I needed a good laugh.

🤣

😆

Their letter starts off with a whole load of waffle about the history of trans rights cases.

Then, by the time you get to page 16, it gets on to the main issue.

The GLP point out that the interim guidance says

"In workplaces, it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets, as well as sufficient single-sex changing and washing facilities where these facilities are needed."

But the Workplace Regulations 1992 say

"separate rooms containing conveniences are provided for men and women except where and so far as each convenience is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside."

Or, in other words, separate self contained toilets used by one person at a time are a suitable alternative to single sex toilets.

They seem to think that this is a huge "gotcha".

But they do go on to say that since this is done under the Workplace Regs and not the Equality Act then the FWS case has no effect when it comes to toilets in the workplace.

As a result, they say, it is necessary to look to the GRA 2004 and that people with a GRC should still be able to use toilets of the opposite sex in a workplace.

They then go on to explain some way in which service providers could also allow trans people into public toilets of the opposite sex if they wished to.

I have no idea how the Equality Act might interact with the Workplace Regs (or if the two even do interact) but this is the argument that GLP are putting forward.
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The second ground of their claim is that since they believe that the interim advice is wrong that issuing it has been a breach of the Human Rights Act and so should be withdrawn.
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The third ground is that if the interim guidance is correct then the law is incompatible with the Human Rights Act.
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Oh, and by the way, they also want:

"The Commission is requested to withdraw its Interim Update immediately and to state publicly that the Interim Update is of no effect and its advice should not be followed."
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How strong a case or otherwise this is, I have no idea. But this is their latest move.

So... hold on. The guidance about how to follow the law is not only " needlessly cruel" but also somehow "unlawful"
Am I missing something? 😂

Better make sure the minister understands though because a lot of people must be confused and taken in by the ‘intersex’ wedge.

They need to rename their project because it is neither of those things.