Consequences of ls v NHSE England court win, discuss & explore the detail of judgement, what this means for other cases and institutions

Just thinking back to that question posed to Starmer, "can a woman have a penis?" The only sensible answer is "Fuck me, of course not!", but it seems there is literally no-one in the Labour Party brave enough to say that out loud. This where we are, and have been for years, and this why we have lunacies like non-binary passports. And, of course, the madness has descended in plenty of other countries too.

SecretSquirrelLoo This was a massive overstep by trans activists. The wider they made the definition of trans, the less likely it was to be able to hold any kind of legal status.

I think this is a crucial point. Gradually, the UK courts are doing what the law can sometimes be good at: looking really closely at something and picking holes in it.

It's a pity there wasn't more of it before the GRA etc were enacted, but there has been a succession of judgments which have looked at genderwoo and gone 'But there's no there there!' because there's no clear settled definition of gender, transgender, transitioning etc etc.
The result is the law beclowning itself by validating an impossibility - the
legal fiction that people can in any way change sex.

It's even worse here in Ireland where there's self-ID, the law has outsourced the beclowning to anybody who wants to claim they've changed sex.

edited to wonder if that should be 'the GRA etc was enacted'? That sounds right, but the 'etc' makes it plural... anyway, you know what I mean

I am worried about the likely changes in PM and Ministers. I’m especially concerned that Andy Burnham sides much more with the “be kind and inclusive” side than women’s safety privacy and dignity. He talks about a new consensus !

I don’t think a GRC is needed to change passport sex?

But yes, the GRA needs repealing. Letting people claim to have changed sex by putting a new name on their utility bills was always a terrible idea.

There used to be clear guidelines for school trips / residentials about the ratio of girls / boys and the sex of staff accompanying. I suspect that in our brave new world the DfE capitulated to the demands of trans activists and removed this as a quick look at the guidance I can find, makes no specific mention of this.

Obviously there's a difference between a trip to the local library and a 3 day residential, but for residentials (and boarding schools) it's a loophole that does need addressing.

I thought it was interesting that this judgement mentioned the expansive definition of trans used in the local NHS guidance. It didn’t make much of a point of this. But there clearly was a mismatch between Stonewall-influenced guidelines which included cross-dressers v local praxis which reportedly was on the basis of full-time gender presentation (although perhaps with flexibility, though this was expressed in a mealy mouthed manner). Then in yet another scenario, during the tribunal there was discussion of a hypothetical male who has undergone surgery. The tribunal didn’t (need to) base any part of its judgment on these discrepancies, but did make sure to note them.

This lack of any stable definition of what trans might mean in either law of practice is, I think, one of the main reasons the movement is losing so spectacularly in the courts and in public opinion.

Reading the Supreme Court judgement, it looks like the realization that in practice anyone can get a GRC was a significant reason for rejecting its validity as a basis for a new legal sex. Iirc the judgement comments on the complete absence of requirements for anything but a change of name on a utility bill.

This was a massive overstep by trans activists. The wider they made the definition of trans, the less likely it was to be able to hold any kind of legal status.

Of course that was inevitable. Since nothing can actually change someone’s sex, it was necessary for them to claim that by doing nothing, people had nonetheless changed their sex. But initial definitions like in the GRA were fluffy enough that this (apparently) wasn’t fully evident to lawmakers.

Pushing for self-ID while opening a ‘trans umbrella’ including cross-dressers etc turned the headlights on the definitions or lack thereof.

Then of course now there are fools like Green Q who claim all kinds of special words which change constantly and blow out of the water any kind of stable legal definition.

Who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to allow people to change the sex marker on their passports? Should never have been done; the problems it would (and has) caused were obvious from the start. It shows what a hold fuckwittery has had on the body politic in the UK for quite some years now.

From a workplace regs perspective - I think that the imminent EHRC update will also support.

The EHRC’s interim update essentially said that trans people should be prohibited from using single-sex facilities aligned to their gender identity in the workplace. I think this should include places where people change - so female children cannot change a place where a man will change as that is not a single sex space.

I haven't reas teh KCSIE latest draft but safeguarding would apply to residential settings

Safeguarding and Child Protection (e.g., Keeping Children Safe in Education - KCSIE, Education Act 2002 s.175): Schools have a statutory duty to safeguard and promote pupil welfare. This includes appropriate staffing, supervision, and risk assessments for residential visits. Staff must avoid situations that could lead to allegations or harm. Overnight arrangements require clear protocols for access to rooms, night checks, and boundaries.

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and related guidance: Requires suitable risk assessments for educational visits, including accommodation, supervision ratios, and emergency procedures. The Department for Education (DfE) and OEAP National Guidance emphasize effective supervision.

Equality Act 2010 (sex as a protected characteristic): Allows single-sex accommodations and services in certain circumstances (e.g., for privacy, decency, or safety). Schools can (and often should) arrange single-sex pupil sleeping areas. For staff supervision, matching the sex of the group supports privacy and dignity, especially during changing, sleeping, or personal care. Exceptions exist, but blanket policies must be justified.

Teachers' Standards and professional conduct: Teachers must maintain professional boundaries and act as role models. Staying in or entering pupil rooms (especially alone or opposite-sex) carries safeguarding risks.

The school should have single sex policies and confirm biological sex. If the person lies on their record they are commiting a breach of contract and probably a criminal act of voyeurism or exhibitionism and should be dealt with accordingly.

If there is something specific happy to take a DM

On data capture, I was at an NHS health screening event yesterday and we were all asked to complete a survey at the end.

In the EDI section of the survey ( which was voluntary) the first question was “what is your gender?” The options were male, female, gender queer or non binary, agender, prefer not to say and other with a text box).

The second question was “Is your gender identity the same as your sex registered at birth?” With the options yes, no and prefer not to say.

I fucking hate questions that assume everyone has a gender identity. If gender identity is relevant for data capture then it should be asked after any questions on sex. I’m not arguing that data on gender should never be collected but the wording if these particular questions is absolutely in activist language.

I left the questions blank and answered other optional questions about age and religion and sexuality.

This is why everyone should be capturing sex as a characteristic.

You ask for sex - and if not provided the man who has a female gender identity cannot be allowed to accompany girls on a school trip.

Ask for sex, and you can ask for gender. But a passport is not a sex ID document. Where it matters better evidence needs to be given. A clear policy needs to be set out.

I can only imagine there are safeguarding rules around this, and as sex matters in this case it has to be the biological meaning of male and female.

There is a case going through about toilets in childrens schools. If you are a parent I would refuse to send my child on a residential where a man who identifies as a woman is sleeping in the dorms.

That's a good point about adults. Presumably when they drafted the new KCSIE guidance, in particular this:
"Schools and colleges must not allow a child, aged 11 years or older at the start of the school year, to undress in front of a child of the opposite biological sex, to comply with their safeguarding duties"... they didn't think they'd need to add "or creepy adult Fred, now calling himself Freda" who's demanding to "supervise" the girls dormitories and toilets.

This is great, thanks !

Thank you. Very useful info.

Am I right to assume that case law would be needed in schools as well?

There are two specific types of scenario I'm thinking of:

1. students sleeping in residential accommodation, including on school trips
2. staff having access to the following single sex spaces:

• students' residential accommodation, as above
• students' changing rooms and toilets

Re 1, the statutory safeguarding guidance that comes into effect in September this year already covers single-sex changing rooms and toilets. Unfortunately, if it stays as per the draft that was shared for consultation, it doesn't provide the same clarity on residential accommodation

Re point 2, to clarify: I'm referring to male staff (who identify as women) entering the female students' spaces.

And as an additional question, have you seen anything in the case law so far that explains how the situation should be handled when a male insists that "I am a girl/woman", and has been accepted as such owing to having ID which says this? E.g. boys and men can get passports which state they are female.

If they apply to work somewhere (or attend a school, as per the school scenarios above), is there anything that employers/schools can do to mitigate their claims about their sex if such documents have been used to be registered on the HR/school system?

All of this will now get lost in the Labour leadership drama which is unfair

This is what Swift said in the summing up of GLP v EHRC:

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. [2] It is not compulsory for services that are open to the public to be provided on single-sex basis or to have single-sex facilities such as toilets. These can be single-sex if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and they meet other conditions in the Act. However, it could be indirect sex discrimination against women if the only provision is mixed-sex.

I have questions about the 'legality' - compliance with building regs - of taking out blocks of single sex toilets and replace them with an equivalent number of regs-compliant 'universal' toilets.

I wonder if this constitutdes
'the material alteration of a building or a controlled service or fitting'
.
as in
Regulation 3 of the Building Regulations defines ‘building work’.
Building work includes:
a. the erection or extension of a building
b. the provision or extension of a controlled service or fitting
c. the material alteration of a building or a controlled service or fitting.

In which case, where Doc T applies, the alteration would not meet the requirement for single sex provision in the first place, with mixed sex toilets as an optional extra.

Regulation 4 might be relevant too:
If the former provision of single-sex + accessible was adequate for more or less 100% of the population, male, female and able/bodied/disabled, removing that provision and replacing it for the 'convenience' of a very small number of people might contravene
(ii) the building must be no more unsatisfactory in relation to the requirements than before the work was carried out

Opinion polls etc suggest that for the majority of people, removal of the existing single-sex toilets would make the building 'unsatisfactory', but more to the point, it might mean that removing single sex toilets from a building which was already 'satisfactory' made it 'unsatisfactory' in terms of building regs.

IANABRI - I am not a building regs inspector, obviously but there just seems to be something wrong about taking away an established, perfectly adequate, building-regs-compliant toilet provision to replace it with something that is unpopular, questionably compliant, and also questionable in terms of the total number of toilets provided. And all at the behest of a tiny percentage of the population.

Regulation 4 states that building work should be carried out in such a way that, when work is complete:
a. for new buildings or work on a building that complied with the applicable requirements of the Building Regulations: the building complies with the applicable requirements of the Building Regulations.
b. for work on an existing building that did not comply with the applicable requirements of the Building Regulations:
(i) the work itself must comply with the applicable requirements of the Building Regulations
(ii) the building must be no more unsatisfactory in relation to the requirements than before the work was carried out
The Merged Approved Documents

*precedence

Also worth considering that services are also employers and may be providing facilities that are used by both employees and service users. So I assume the Workplace Regs would still take precedent in this situation?

Thank you. Lots achieved, but a way to go still.

Case law at present is in respect of employer / employee relationships.

This isn’t relating to general services - but the EHRC guidance is to be issued and will cover some aspects of service provision.

It probably will need more cases brought on service provision.

FWS goes a long way to clarifying rights related to single sex rights in a lot of cases.

Thanks @usernameinserthere and @MarieDeGournay
Have I understood correctly then, that Employers have to provide single sex facilities, but other organisations (shops, hotels, gyms etc) are not required to, and could get rid of women's facilities in favour of private but mixed sex facilities?

But organisations don't have to provide single sex facilities do they? They can just have lockable cubicles for everyone?
<looks around to see if Keeptoiletssafe is around to share her incredible store of knowledge on the subject - doesn't look like it so here goes with my inexpert opinion!>

It depends, but in some circumstances, yes, organisations do have to provide single sex facilities, acc. to Health and Safety and Workplace Regs.
Also under building regs for England
Approved Document T - Toilet accomodation
Building regs T1.
(1) Toilet accommodation in buildings other than dwellings—
(a) must consist of—
(i) reasonable provision for male and female single-sex toilets,
(ii) or where space precludes provision of single-sex toilets, universal toilets, and
(b) may consist of universal toilets in addition to single-sex toilets.

So 'Universal' i,e, mixed sex toilets - which BTW have to meet building regs specs, they can't just be any old toilet with a new badge stuck on it - may be provided instead of single-sex toilets, but only if there isn't enough space for the latter.
Otherwise they have to be in addition to single sex toilets.

That's just for England, there are different building regs elsewhere - but Doc T is a useful reference point for as it is a very clear and detailed plan for toilet provision in public buildings.

I don't think that making everything mixed sex is legal, in many circumstances, so it would not only be at great financial cost in the short term, but possibly other costs - legal, insurance - in the longer term.

They should keep it simple: men's/women's/accessible/optional mixed sex.

Yes GLP is High Court binding law. Decided after Peggie and Kelly.

They don’t survive on appeal.

Yes I agree. Haven’t see a date pop up yet but will check in on the Kelly v Leonardo thread.