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

@IwantToRetire I think you have a point about labour leaving it to the Courts to determine the interactions of the GRA and the EQA. It gets them out of writing more legislation, the palaver of drafting, green paper, white papers and public consultations, the mayhem that would ensue, which would put them in a difficult position, given certain elements of its membership.

I doubt they have missed the third reason that the democrats lost, and I sense a quiet reverse ferreting is going on.

I feel ill with worry thinking about this case. On the one hand, it could resolve the issue in a narrow way (which would be great, but still not enough to address the full extent of the madness) but on the other hand, it could go the wrong way and conclude that the effect of the two pieces of legislation is (irrespective of what it should be) that the word ‘woman’ is now a mixed sex category.

Like the judgement in Australia.

@ScrollingLeaves The judgement in Australia is at the lower court stage so still has a long way to go.

This case is at the final hurdle, and most of the legal commentary i have read, by legal academics and the like is positive.

Thank you. That is good to know someone higher in Australia might think better of it, and you shine a ray of hope for the FWS case.

I understand all this anxiety here it must be terrible for those of us who have spent years suffering the awareness of this friggiing bulldozer, whilst i felt a bit of a twit for not joining the dots earlier i am kinda glad from a selfish perspective that i was late to the party.

Amnesty and EHRC still haven't released their submissons.

I find that somewhat of note. All Amnesty seem to be hinting at is that: they are coming at it from an International Human Rights perspective. Hmmm. I really want to read how they square that one without throwing women and girls under the bus.

Not bold enough to let us all read it prior. Unlike the FWR side.

Requests to the Court and to Amnesty/EHRC have only so far resulted in holding emails, according to Conservatives For Women.

MBM are planning to lodge an application with the Supreme Court for disclosure of the unpublished submissions from Scot Govt, EHRC and Amnesty. Ball's in their court now whether to publish or force women to pay a fee to require them to publish.

x.com/mbmpolicy/status/1858498057538551891

EHRC are refusing to publish their submission following a FOI request. Claiming exemption under s.32 FOI .
It's in the latest FWS Scotland email.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/submission_to_uk_supreme_court_i_2/response/2803754/attach/2/Response%20information%20exempt.pdf

A rather odd response from a human rights organisation.

That is so sneaky! So not finalised on 21 October, so info not held, but then finalised and filed on 22 October? So there must have been an opportunity between finalising and filing when they could have responded to the FOI request.

I'd be flagging up the ICO. This is not freedom.

Am I allowed to mention the bare patch in FWS's garden? It needs a bit more attention and you can learn how by following the link on their website.

The Scottish Government has now published its submission, which can be accessed here.
https://gov.scot/publications/for-women-scotland-ltd-appellant-v-the-scottish-ministers-respondent-supreme-court-hearing-statement-of-case/

We finally get the truth of how crazy they are that according to their submission, a GRA certificate changes someone's sex. Also uses the term "pregnant man":

Lucy Hunter Blackburn
https://x.com/LucyHunterB/status/1859626321564856587

This is the final instalment of a story that began almost 6 (6) years ago, when Lisa, Kath and I asked SG what it thought the effect of a GRC was under the Equality Act (given they wanted to hand out many more, more easily). Their response was to avoid the question. For years.
And now here we are. The SG is going to the highest court in the land to argue that a GRC changes your sex under the Equality Act.

What took you so long?

Apart from the need to obscure this point for all the years of consultation and proceedings on the GRR Bill.

ForWomenScot had the courage to do the only thing that would make you come out with it - a court case. Even now, it took an application to the court to make you share your thoughts in writing.

It'll always be a black mark against all those involved in this in the SG and against Holyrood as an institution, that it took women living on their wits to get to this point.

And that it took so long.

84 MSPs voted for a Bill that the government - we now know - believed would let people switch between the categories man and woman under the Equality Act, the critical legislation for women's rights, by a non-falsifiable act of self-declaration.

In fact it began before that - other women who managed to meet civil servants in early 2018 were asking this. I mean a 6-year story for me. Much longer for others.

For shame, Scotland.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has now published its submission, which can be accessed here.
https://equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/ehrc-intervention-women-scotland-supreme-court-appeal

Thanks to all the amazing women who exposed the truth. Lets hope the courts listen. Gardening can help too.

deleted
Sorry, didn't realise there were two separate submissions.

when are we likely to know the outcome?

After the hearing?

The Supreme Court will hear the appeal by For Women Scotland Ltd on the issue of whether a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female is a ‘woman’ for purposes of the Equality Act 2010 on 26 and 27 November 2024.

whether a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female is a ‘woman’

Even In this statement the word ‘female’ is either being wrongly used or has lost its original, biological meaning.

Is this a legal statement? If this initial statement starts out so confused, is the case not on the wrong track from the start for lack of meaningful language?

It's the language of section 9 of the GRA. Gender is female, sex is woman.

I know.

I've just skim read the Commission's submission. Will read again in detail tomorrow. No great surprises.

From The Conclusion:

The difficulties identified above in relation to the application of the EqA in light of this definition are profound and significantly impair the proper functioning of the EqA, but, ultimately, they are for Parliament to resolve. In the Commission’s view, the arguments ventilated, and to be ventilated, on this appeal highlight the importance and the urgency of Parliament giving careful consideration to the drafting of the EqA and the balance which it currently strikes (inter alia) between the rights of women and those of transgender persons.

On my first swift shuffty at the Scottish ministers submission i have two thoughts which are

weak arguments about the scope of the GRA

Over emphasis of their delegated legislative powers which may not run in the UK Supreme Court

So does that leave us with Amnesty's submisson still not published? Or have I missed it?

Thank you for explaining that. That faulty wording alone shouid make GRCs illegal. I bet anything that the Oxford Dictionary of 2004 would have unequivocally explained ‘female’ in biological terms.

The EA language does not say ‘female’ is biological but presumably (used to) assume it is.
Section 212 of the Equality Act 2010 defines a woman as "a female of any age"

Just remember that Starmer is proud of Labour’s GRA 2004 and proud of Labour’s EA2010.

So if EHRC is arguing that a GRC does change sex for all legal purposes, Labour’s position will be: we are proud of the law we created and will comply with it.

@LoobiJee the GRA came about because of the Goodwin ruling, that the UK was not compliant with international law so the labour government had no choice but to bring about this annoying law. If the tories were in power at the time that time the same thing would have happened. The tories were all for self ID weren’t they.

It does piss me off somewhat when we get in to party politics about how we got to this place. As a sex realist i would appeal to you to realise what binds us together is a singular goal, and not bring our voting habits in to the meld. It is not helpful.

in sisterhood we stand.

There can be no excuse for the garbled, nonsensical drafting of the law, and no doubt alternatives could have been found.

It was also discriminatory to same sex couples that they could not marry at that time, but a falsely mixed sex couple could.
It was also unpublicised at the time.

Keir Starmer boasted about Labour having created the GRA not so long ago, which I find unreasonable. He is a lawyer who should see its faults, not double down.