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

Would only be relevant if the child was recognised as the parent and vice versa imo.

What is clear is that poorly considered law has many unintended consequences.

Labour Party, please take note.

Adoption isn’t the same at all, I hate this comparison.

Yesterday the arguments were appealing to material reality and common sense.

Today the arguments are appealing to legal precedent and linguistics.

I'm not sure that's a good thing for us, tbh.

Sunlight is good. Win or lose this case, we win. I really think.

Perhaps we will be lucky and one of the judges has adoptive family

"The point of surgery is not that it turns a person into the opposite sex; its purpose is to make the individual comfortable with their own body" ( hence surgery not a requirement in order to change one's legal sex)"

That’s why she’s speaking so slowly and getting down in the weeds. She hasn’t got much to go on. The phrase “dancing on the heads of a pin” springs to mind. Contrast with AO’N and BC having to canter through their submissions & refer the judges back to their written submissions to cover all the grounds of their appeal and impacts of the current sex fudge.

Well done SG for flagging that no surgical intervention is required for a GRC. Own goal I think, but helpful.

"certificated sex" ought to be avoided she says - sure, because it accidentally makes things much too clear!

Will men have to be men until they die.

erm, yes

Language .
She doesn't like the term certificated sex.
Use " sex of a person" instead.

Blimey.The nerve.

Had this barrister just done #bekind by appealing to the judges “won’t you think of poor Mrs Bellinger”?? Does she have to remain a man until death?

Great. That’s really going to make all this so much clearer, isn’t it.

They can jog on.

Yes and therefore female = male person with a certificate.

Adoption is quite different. It changes responsibilities and relations, but doesn't pretend to change the actual person.

She is pushing towards reassigned gender being simply known as sex?

Becoming the sex they were not born as?

By buying a cert for a fiver.

0.001 % of the adult population. So few GRCs issued

'what point are you making?'

I wish the judges would ask her how many certificates have been issued in the last couple of years

Judge: "What point are you making?"

😂

'number is insignificant'

All this request to the judges not to use terms legal or certificated sex is also an attempt to police how the judges try to work through this.

How can you write a decision if you are being unkind about making distinctions betwen TW and Women.?

The 'very small number' argument once again missing the number of people affected by each person with a GRC.

The relatively low number of GRCs given has no bearing on the principles of law, surely? ( she says 430 per year currently awarded)