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

Reading the Scottish governments response and something that I find odd is this… if a man gets a GRC he becomes a member of the female sex in law and so gets the benefit of all the sex based protections. If a man doesn’t get a GRC he remains legally a man. Fine. Except having a GRC is private and you aren’t allowed to ask if someone has a GRC! So this means that being a woman is a matter of a piece of paper which we can’t ask to see, we can’t verify. If I want to exclude men from my business (let’s say I offer personal grooming services to women only), and a man claims he has a GRC and so is a woman I must take his word for it. Whether a man has become a woman is unverifiable. This is surely absurd.

i also note from the response they admit that lesbians would not be able to exclude males with GRCs from a lesbian only group. The intent of parliament was apparently for lesbians to consider these people to be women. The impact on lesbians of admitting males to the group is blithely hand waved away with the assertion that the fact lesbians don’t want to associate with male women and don’t find them attractive doesn’t diminish their protection as lesbians. Well, I’d love to hear what lesbians say about that. You still get legal protection as lesbians but by the way these males are considered lesbian to and they must come to your groups. It means that lesbianity is no longer about same sex attraction but must somehow also be about same sex attraction plus “males with a certificate we can’t verify” attraction. Again, absurd. Lesbianity isn’t about being attracted to a person with a certificate.its a mess.

The intent of parliament was apparently for lesbians to consider these people to be women

I think that is right, because it was all done to make it possible for two men to marry ( at a time when same sex marriage was not legal) by pretending in law that a man was a woman, therefore ‘she’ could legally marry a man.

By logical extension, it makes it possible for the reverse too:
a mixed sex couple could be called homosexual when a heterosexual man obtains a GRC and ‘she’ is therefore made into a lesbian.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”….

Someone on TwiX posted to the effect:

10.55 in the morning. Chris is a heterosexual man, a man attracted to women.

11.00 Post arrives, with Chris' GRC. Chris is now a homosexual woman, a woman attracted to women. From 11am Chris changes from being a straight man to being a lesbian.

Make it make sense.

I thought you were allowed to ask if they have a GRC. You're just not allowed to disclose whether they do or not to other people.

That's very well done, and strikingly accurate.

Does anyone know, will the outcome definitely happen by the end of the scheduled court date or can it drag on/be postponed like cases in lower courts sometimes are? Will we likely have a concrete outcome by next week, in other words? I don't want them to kick the can down the road but I do want them to come to a measured and sensible conclusion.

It is highly unlikely we will get a judgment at the end of the case. Judgment will be reserved to allow the judges to consider the arguments re-review all the case law referred to etc and then come to a conclusion. It is possible that the judges may even disagree so you may get a majority judgement with separate dissenting judgments. You may also get more than one judgement even if they agree.
The ramifications of this decision are potentially huge so they will want it to be legally water tight before it is issued.

Mmmnotsure · Today 13:17

Make it make sense.

I think the standard treatment is to take magic mushrooms and then get kicked in the head by a horse.

Dear @SinnerBoy
Many thanks for your very helpful suggestion. I am off to see if we have any sloes left, so will add to the search list.

Whatever the outcome, I have nothing but the deepest and most enduring respect for the women of FWS. I can't begin to imagine the extent of their courage, determination and endurance. They're total heroines of the contemporary fightback for women's rights. Payday is next Friday and I'll do as much gardening as I possibly can, their latest update says there's a shortfall.

i think there are five judges sitting. Each will write their own judgement and a consensus will be drawn either way. A judge may described as dissenting if they disagree with the majority so a huge palava before a decision is issued. I do believe.

I’m listening to the audiobook of “The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht” at the moment and I thoroughly agree with your description of FWS. They’re impressive and fierce women!

Edited to add: Thanks for the reminder to donate!

here here re FWS

The thing is the Goodwin ruling only said that they had to allow him to marry and recognise his gender, they could have done that simply by legalising gay marriage and adding a gender marker to all legal id documents ie driving licence, passport etc.
Labour specifically chose to create the GRA against the advice of some very perceptive members of the house of Lords. You should look up the debates on hansard

So could Labour have achieved the required result simply by legislating for same sex marriage?

Yes. Blair (the closet Catholic) thought the British voters weren’t ready to accept this so fudged a compromise aka the GRA.

I think so, but at the time Tony Blair did not think gay marriage would be accepted by the public. But it is still no excuse.

The Gender Recognition Act was created in 2004 and came into force April 2005.

Civil Partnerships for gay couples were also introduced in 2004 and came into force 5 Dec 2005.
……………

Gender Recognition Bill — Allow Marriages to Remain Valid If They Become a Same Sex Marriage
Division number 188 – in the House of Commons on 25 May 2004.

Though I am a bit confused as to how this vote fits in with the whole GRA debate, as far as I can make out this section must have meant a vote on whether to allow a previously heterosexual marriage to remain legal/become a legal ‘same sex’ marriage when one partner gets a GRC.
But seeing people’s speeches, other issues are introduced too.

It is interesting to see that this MP, Patrick Cormak wisely warned about GRCs.

“I am sorry to provide a slightly dissenting and jarring note. I do not for a moment criticise the integrity, sincerity or campaigning zeal of the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) and for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) and I have great admiration for my hon. Friend Mr. Boswell. My hon. Friend is a decent and good man and I respect him greatly, but I believe him to be wrong on this issue.

“It is not just the road to hell that is paved with good intentions; so is the road to bad legislation. This is bad legislation, because legislation that calls upon people to tell lies is fundamentally flawed. My main objection to the Bill derives from those clauses that oblige registrars to issue birth certificates that are untrue. I do not object in any way to people seeking to show understanding and compassion to minority groups. I would hesitate to call transsexuals a "community"—I have never known a transsexual community—but there are individuals who no doubt feel deeply distressed, and who will be relieved when this legislation is on the statute book. But we are doing the wrong deed, however right and honourable some of the reasons might be.

“This is a case of people of a liberal disposition—people who are deeply anxious not to offend anybody and to please everybody—introducing legislation that is fundamentally flawed, and which will cause great heartache and real worry in certain religious communities. I know that those issues were discussed earlier today, and I am sorry that I was not present; I was attending a meeting of the House of CommonsCommission. I also know—I heard the Minister's winding-up speech—that they have not been satisfactorily addressed or answered. We will have to depend on secondary legislation, which will not be amendable, and we do not know when it will be introduced.

“At the end of the day, we are faced with a Bill that obliges people to say things that are not so. I do not want to go into great detail, as others wish to speak and I want my contribution to be brief. We know that those who are persuaded that they are of the wrong sex or gender do not necessarily have physical differences and do not necessarily have to undergo surgery of any sort, yet they are to be recognised and issued with a birth certificate that contradicts the natural facts of life. That cannot be right and I am profoundly disturbed and troubled that the House should be passing such legislation. I am very sad indeed that my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry, who speaks from the Front Bench, and others among my hon. Friends feel that they have to agree, because of their natural compassion, to the enactment of such deeply flawed legislation.

www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2004-05-25.1521.1#g1521.3

Sorry to derail, but just to be fair I think Blair was personally very enthusiastic about reforms. ( He did fudge though!)

Blair takes on the Pope by backing gay marriage
The ex-PM, a Catholic convert who introduced same-sex civil unions, intervenes over issue that has split the church
Jane Merrick
Sunday 11 March 2012 01:00 GMT
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/blair-takes-on-the-pope-by-backing-gay-marriage-7555115.html

This was written 2014.
Tony Blair has done more for lgbt rights than any U.K. politician. Whatever your politics he is a gay icon.
www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tony-blair-has-done-more-for-lgbt-rights-than-any-uk-politician-whatever-your-politics-he-s-a-gay-icon-9757722.html

Thanks very muchly scrolling leaves

Thank you for picking this particular part out Scrolling. He (Cormak), among others, foresaw, and stated, the issues so clearly!
(It is both fascinating and deeply frustrating to read the whole hansard in light of where we are now.)

There's an article in the Times about the women of FWS and the court case:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ffb8571b-dd9c-4063-9635-f2cf72126736?shareToken=ff6cddbe88521c094c3e757a12561bfb

Good article peps one up

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2024-11/UKSC%202024.0042%20Written%20Intervention%20-%20Amnesty%20International%20%28as%20filed%29.pdf?VersionId=vAan9v7XZcPctjLYOcu9ZXS1NANvBHfc

This is Amnesty’s submission and x discussion.

https://x.com/lnmackenzie1/status/1861000314616197383?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

Came here to post that too! Amnesty think blanket exclusions of all male people are illegal because they don't meet the proportionate means to a legitimate aim test.

So they are essentially saying there can be no female only services or spaces.