For Women Scotland heading for Supreme Court

[Imnobody4]

You can read the reasons etc in For Women Scotlands crowdfunder. They are launching this review
UK Supreme Court: The Definition of Sex in the Equality Act

The Inner House of the Court of Session Judgment

We believe the Equality Act was drafted on the basis of the ordinary, common law understanding of the biological differences between the two sexes. The protected characteristic of “sex” in the Equality Act is defined as a reference to a man or a woman, where man means “a male of any age” and woman means “a female of any age”. We think it is quite clear that these are distinct and separate groups and that “woman” is not a mixed-sex category.

However, in our recent judicial review, For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers [2023] CSIH 37, the Inner House took the opposite view and decided there is a relationship between the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) and Equality Act 2010 and held that the meaning of sex in the Equality Act incorporated the GRA framework.

The court decision stated that a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) in their acquired gender has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Separately, they also possess the protected characteristic of sex according to the terms of their GRC and have a presumptive right to access the single-sex services of their acquired gender.

The Supreme Court will consider a request brought by For Women Scotland (FWS) who argue there are “strong grounds” for its challenge, which will almost certainly overturn contentious Scottish government legislation if successful.Campaigners for women’s “sex-based” rights reacted with delight to the news, including Magi Gibson, the poet, who posted on X/Twitter, that it was “game on” on in the “fight for the protection of women’s rights within the UK legal system”.Dennis Noel Kavanagh, a lawyer and the director of Gay Men’s Network, said: “Getting permission to go to the Supreme Court is really hard and very rare but FWS have it. The question ‘what is a woman’ in law will now be heard by our highest court. Massive news.”

www.thetimes.com/article/088ae0ce-fba9-4b97-8331-01a32195bef5?shareToken=3ada340957f5d2af2e20b01a7c15da3b

I might have got hopes up unnecessarily:

6.9.6 Interventions will be allowed in writing only, unless compelling reasons are shown for the allowance of oral intervention.

Practice direction 6 of the Supreme Court.

I don’t want to fight either and a GI Belief would also work. I agree definitions would be a huge issue.

I also think like most PC the other side need the same protection/rights I.e. not having a GI is also protected.

Sorry to be that pedant but the first and third things are not absolute eg boiling point changes with altitude.

Men are still not women though!

Equal pay is sex only not GR

The tribunal tweet sub stack shows intervenors making oral arguments as

• sex Matters
• Ben Cooper
• David Welsh
• EHRC
• Jason Coppel
• Zoe Gannon

So we do get Ben Cooper after all? Great.

A cameo!

oh! If Ben is making an appearance I'll juggle the rest of my day. work late

The current text in the Equality Act around religion and belief doesn't really go into definitions or theology at all, and covers lack of a religion or belief too. So could it not cover GI without going into what that means? Although it would be lovely to have a coherent definition after all these years!

TT from this morning

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1861350480472924453.html

Live coverage from The Supreme Court

https://www.supremecourt.uk/live/court-01.html

Depends @fenlandia, are flat earthers protected by it?

Where is the line?

Oh my days it's a can of worms.

I keep thinking of that Shakespeare quote, Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we set out to deceive...

I’m just catching up on the thread. I couldn’t watch today. I wouldn’t assume that judges don’t understand because of the questions asked. The make up question highlights an absurdity that some people appear to be suggesting that fundamental protections depend on mutable external factors. Do I lose the right to equal pay if I am wearing trousers and no make up?

The law must be based on immutable factors eg if a condition is going to be classified as a disability then it has to be likely to persist for a period of time (12 months +) rather than be transient. It can’t be that you can alter which rights apply by changing trivial external factors like clothing.

Interesting - should an employer be allowed to discriminate against a person who believes the earth is flat? I'd say no but then what if they worked in a science centre or an observatory or a globe making factory? It's no more outrageous than blood of Christ etc. Tricky! I'd love to see that employment tribunal - Flat Earther vs Globes RUS

I think belief in a flat earth would not pass the Grainger test because it is a factual question about material reality and has been disproved.

Covered by what, the equality act belief characteristic? If that what you mean then I don't know if flat earthism meets the Grainger criteria. Context might matter - I've got a colleague with some odd beliefs but they don't interfere with his work or how he gets along with others. A flat earther airline pilot might be trickier!

I can not believe that we have got to the point that the definition of women needs to be dealt with by a court.

It's a nonsense, but so is the GRA.

It's that Simon Edge novel again! The one about the flat earth charity

Not familiar with the Grainger test but surely material reality is just as relevant when it comes to GI theory...?

I was just reading the TT discussion from earlier and my overriding thought was just this:

It could be so simple if you just LET IT!!

Enjoying the ratio and comments on Amnesty's X post.

https://x.com/AmnestyUK/status/1861026204293189954

(i) The belief must be genuinely held. (ii) It must be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available. (iii) It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.

Genderist views have never been Grainger tested in court, afaik.

Again, frustration that so much more could be being achieved if we weren't expending so much effort and time, and money and energy on what is painfully fkn obvious to most.

Ack, sorry, I missed half of them off!

Grainger criteria
To qualify as a ‘philosophical belief’ under the Equality Act, the belief must satisfy the five criteria set out at para 24 in Grainger plc v Nicholson [2010] and mirrored in the Equality and Human Rights Commission Code of Practice 2011. These are that:

• The belief must be genuinely held
• The belief must not simply be an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available
• The belief must concern a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour
• The belief must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance
• The belief must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not be in conflict with the fundamental rights of others.