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

From PP:

we might end up with an "improvement" to the GRA which means that it's really easy to change your gender and your gender can be whatever you want (so the government that makes that change can be seen as progressive and trans-friendly) - but at the same time, the EA and other legislation gets clarified so that your gender has no effect on anything, being seen as clearly legally distinct from sex. Which would be perfect.

That makes sense to me, and is really what the gender people are asking for. Gender is at eleventy variations and they're all equally important. So the only fair way is to recognise them all to exactly 100% of the extent they should be recognised.

As a Very Serious Hobby, like Golf or Model Railways or Cross-stitch.

That would match Lady Haldane's judgement, which was effectively that the law contradicted itself.

i don’t understand what she means but she has a very clear way of saying it.

Yes isn't she saying that sex means something different in different parts of the act? And really, is that good law?

'All individuals belong to one of two genders, albeit not necessarily the gender recorded at birth'

That's a good point. but they are still covered by the GRA so double protection on that score but it seems no protection at all on their biological sex?

That's my take from it.

no no, Arabella, I was agreeing with you, the penny dropped for me too.

'A person whose sex becomes that of a man or a woman as a consequence of a GRC belongs to that sex and will have the protections afforded under the EA'

Are the Scottish government arguing there are only x2 genders? What about the non-binaries? 😮😮😮

Yeah, but it's clear this is no place for logic!

Pips Bunce is going to be raging.

Ask what is living in the acquired gender, Judges!!

Edited because I am typing without thinking

I suppose she might have a point on living in the acquired gender as far as TM go having a baby isn't really living in the acquired gender.

GENDER KLAXXON - what about bigender nongender agender nonbinary and so on

Notice how slowly and carefully she's speaking. Unlike yesterday's speakers. Because she has to think so carefully about what she's saying, probably double and triple checking in her head that she's got it right. Because it's all bollocks.

Agree! She's very legalsitic, naturally.....and detail seems to be her speciality......whether or not her interpretation of that detail is the most convincing, remains to be seen.

Living as a woman...

Old and now unlawful guidance .

The revised guidance as challenged says nothing about living as a woman.

After yesterdays clarity, I’m back to not following this. This woman’s voice has a soporific affect unfortunately.

I cannot believe I'm witnessing the gender apocalypse. We need gender to include all the good genders, it's got nothing at all to do with dirty dirty biology and its annoying sciency facts. It's all in your soul and it's very important.

I'm gutted that i missed Ben Cooper yesterday.

Sections 2 and 7 I think.

As I understand it, her argument is the Humpty Dumpty one: "'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’"

I'm really struggling to follow this too!

Has this court at any point set out what the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ will be taken to mean by them, now, during their discussions?

'not entirely felicitously worded' - no shit

I'm already a bit confused tbh. But am listening anyway.