Please help me send an email to our Chief Exec who has announced they are ignoring the Supreme Court

@PlanetJanette If you really think that a court will find that getting a GRC means someone can switch toilets that are provided under the workplace regulations, then try to construct a reasoned argument how that works. Bear in mind that the provision of seperate sex toilets is for reasons of decency and propriety of those using them.

Can you explain why a male-bodied person entering a women's toilet would be any less offending to a woman's decency and propriety when that male-bodied person holds a GRC about which the woman is not entitled to know?

It may be worth pointing out that this argument is only about trans people who hold GRC's. There's never been any legal doubt about which toilet a trans person who doesn't hold a GRC should use - it has always been that they must use the toilet of their biological sex.

@MyAmpleSheep Excellently put

The order doesn't matter, as far as the reasoning goes:

The EA came after the GRA: the only way for the EA to make sense is for 9(3) of the GRA to apply, so Parliament must have intended, when it passed the EA, to include it in 9(3) of the GRA.

The Workplace Regulations came before the GRA: The only way for the Workplace Regulations to make sense is for 9(3) of the GRA to apply, so Parliament must have intended, when it passed the GRA, to include the Workplace Regulations in 9(3) of it.

The same argument applies, regardless of the order the legislation was created.

Did you have another reason to believe that the Workplace Regulations must have some other meaning of men and women than based on biological sex?

@PlanetJanette oh and i guess you are a Lawyer of the barrack room variety.

@PlanetJanette “The new legislation is assumed to be the most definitive and the most recent expression of parliament”

Well that was in part the reasoning of the SC ruling since the EQA was well after the GRA.

You arguments are very confused.

I’ve already explained at length why I think they are distinguishable. Also I’m afraid if you think it doesn’t matter which legislation came first then you’re not very familiar with statutory interpretation.

Also I’ve made no claims about what the courts will find in the future. I’ve merely pointed out that those claiming the law is settled are wrong.

It doesn't matter which act came first or second. The only way for the workplace regulations not to be nonsense are to be understood to be included in the exemptions to the GRA in 9(3), therefore that is what the courts will say Parliament will have intended. FWS is a SC judgement laying out the reasoning, so it will have to be followed by any lower court.

You asked:

But how do courts get around the fact that Parliament passed a law that said that a trans woman with a GRC is 'for all purposes' a woman, and a trans man with a GRC is 'for all purposes' a man;

That question has been answered by several people, based on the judgement of the SC decision in FWS. You can accept that that same reasoning will be applied to the workplace toilet regulations, in which case you'll also be "sure" as we are, that those regulations refer to biological sex. If you don't accept that same reasoning, then it would be interesting to hear why you think those regulations are distinguishable and why a court would hold otherwise.

According to normal constitutional law interpretation that’s precisely what they need to do.

That is why the consequential amendments sections of some legislation is the longest and most detail parts. Because the interaction between old legislation and new legislation is complex. And where Parliament doesn’t expressly disapply elements of new legislation to accommodate old legislation, the new legislation is assumed to be the more definitive and most recent expression of the sovereignty of Parliament.

They don’t need to make a comprehensive list of rules and regulations it applies/doesn’t apply to. It’s nonsensical to include men in the definition of women when providing single-sex facilities as they exist to protect women from men. Cry harder.

Obvs because they're really inconvenient to men.

It's much easier for men to use and abuse women if women don't have bloody inconvenient rights.

Given that it is undeniable that female-bodied people have different physical and social challenges to male-bodied people, why is it so important to you that female people not be allowed to have sex-specific rights, spaces and protections?

Precisely. Parliament knew in 2004 that they wanted to make some exceptions to the 'all purposes' provision. But the Workplace Regulations were not one of the exceptions they chose to make.

Even Governments don't get to repeal legislation without Parliament agreeing.

Except that in the case of the Workplace Regs, it is the GRA that is the second act. Parliament could have chosen to clarify the Workplace Regs. It could have exempted the workplace regs from 'all purposes'.

But it chose not to do that.

The point I've made from the start here is that people claiming with certainty that failing to provide toilets segregated by biological sex is unlawful are spoofing.

Might the courts find that in the future? Sure. They might also find the opposite. Those claiming that the matter is settled in law are wrong.

I mean that is clearly what Parliament legislated for.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that's not what the law says.

@VivaDixie i will dm you, if I either figure out how to do it on my phone. If not when I can log on to my laptop.

I would keep the response simple and purely based on the law that it is, and always has been unlawful to allow males to access places that are for women & girls only.

Template I’ve recently used:

« I am wondering when your organisation will comply with the Equality Act 2010 and restrict female tennis, at all levels, to women and girls only. Currently, if you are not aware, you have divided your female tennis competitions to female-only in 'Specified Competitions', but you still allow males to play against women and girls in female-only events outside of that made-up category.

This is against the law, namely the Equality Act 2010, which was confirmed in the Supreme Court's ruling on April 16' 2025, clarifying that the meaning of 'woman' is biological in basis, and that neither self ID nor a gender recognition certificate overrides this definition. This means that all sport, including tennis, which offers a category for women and girls only, means exactly that: it's for women and girls only.

I look forward to you announcing the scrapping of all policies that violate the law in regards to the safety and fairness for women and girls in tennis events covered by the LTA. With the Wimbledon tennis tournament coming up at the end of the month, it would be a shame for any part of the event to be overshadowed by either public protests (à la Imane Khelif/Lin Yu-Ting at the Olympics) or for you to be faced with litigation for sex discrimination from your female members.

Please respond ASAP with either 1) a public announcement that you are ending unfairness for your female members in every way and at every level or 2) the legal advice you have received as to why you believe the law applies only to
'Specified Competitions' and not 'Non-Specified Competitions'.

If you need a template, please see the Football Association's announcement on 1 May 2025.

regards etc

Wes Streeting told Darlington NHS to get men out of women's spaces. So it seems this government, at least, agrees with us.

If you genuinely believe that any government, is now going to reverse ferret and say actually, that's wrong, there's no such thing as a single sex female space, good luck with that.

If you have not seen it already gave a look at this thread.
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5325646-anyone-else-work-at-a-uni?page=1

Even the GRA doesn’t believe that a person with a GRC has changed sex ´for all purposes’. In Section 16 it is careful to state that a GRC does not change entitlements to peerages: women can’t inherit their father’s title and men can’t forgo their father’s title. Funny that.

16 Peerages etc.
The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act—
(a)does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour

Yes it’s getting clearer because for sure the GRA wording is confusing and has led to lots of the problems with conflation of sex and gender.

As I now understand, the GRA was to create a legal standing for transsexuals regarding their human rights and their personal interaction with “the state” concerning pensions, marriage, finance, family etc. That was Goodwin’s part of the 2002 case and the privacy part came from “I”’s case regarding privacy & paperwork for access to education/employment. All of this covers issues when interacting with the formalities of the “state” rather than general “society”.

The GRA always had the exceptions in 9(3) and looking at them now it’s clearer to me that the exceptions all cover interactions where the rights of trans individuals clash with the rights of others? Sport, crime, succession, peerages etc and as you say there’s a whole “anything else” cover-all in the form of “any other enactment or subsidiary legislation”. Parliament presumably knew it would be complicated and thought they’d just wait to see what was challenged legally in due course. They didn’t predict that activists would create a new secular religion - with stringent thought-policing to enable widespread & blatant law breaking.

The “subordinate legislation” part of 9(3) applies to Building Regulations, Workplace Regs, Statutory Guidance etc and therefore covers toilets. And the ability to legally permit single sex toilets was first linked to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (segregation for the legitimate purposes of privacy, dignity and safety) and then this was replaced by the Equality Act.

So in reality, those with GRCs have been using single sex toilets on a legally dubious basis since 2004. This went unchallenged based on there being a very small number of transexuals and women’s goodwill/silence/confusion/coercion/avoidance (delete as appropriate).

Had things broadly stayed the same, transsexuals would have been left alone and women would have “budged up”. But by pushing self-ID the trans numbers (and so many cases of egregious over-reach) swelled to a point where women (FWS) made that (maybe inevitable) legal challenge - leading to the Supreme Court clarification. Which makes the idiotic push for self ID such a massive own goal.

In short - workplaces are obliged to provide single sex spaces, the sex segregation of which have been legally permitted by equality law since (at least) 1975. OP’s employer will fall foul of employment law if they don’t provide single sex facilities for women.

Trans people will have to bring their own legal challenges if they don’t want to use facilities on the basis of sex segregation. But this will, in no doubt, result in provision of “third space” facilities. Because while trans people probably do have a human right to a protected space - it’s not their human right to use the single sex space identified for women. Moylon & Mcloud will argue in their case in the courts/Europe but presumably those who have donated to the crowdfunder may be disappointed … apparently large sections of European law are based on a biological definition of sex which isn’t likely to get overturned. Ever. (I don’t have a citation for this last bit because it was mentioned by the FWS wims on a webinar and I didn’t catch the exact phrase).

Sorry for typing this all out but it’s helping me process all this info which is new to me - what have I got wrong ?!

If there are men using the single sex toilets then there are no single sex toilets. So this policy fails the Workplace Regs.

The Workplace Regulations, by contrast, pre-dated the GRA2004. As such, Parliament passed a provision saying that someone's sex was, for all purposes, that stated as their acquired gender in a GRC in full knowledge and view there was statute requiring single sex facilities in workplaces, in full contemplation that some exceptions were needed (e.g. peerages) and yet Parliament chose not to carve out the Workplace Regulations from the GRA2004 provisions.

Sex and gender are not the same thing, I think you know that.

Watching with interest as my uni has declared "Use the toilets you feel most comfortable using." 🙄🤦

Well personally I'm most comfortable using single sex toilets, but apparently a person born male may feel the same way and they've okayed them using the same space as me. 😡 Ridiculous.