For Women Scotland in Supreme court - thread 2

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5182666-for-women-scotland-heading-for-supreme-court

Likewise if SG’s representatives had any substance to offer the fact of it being presented by women (not that we can tell that they are) would have helped I think.

Does that endanger the case? I am nowhere close to a lawyer but would have thought the groups on the same side would have tried to align ahead of time!

There is somebody on X, who claims to have fed the entirety of Tribunal Tweets' coverage of the case into Chat GPT and asked it to "think like a judge". They (I wouldn't presume to guess their gender) are either a clever clever legal person or Chat GPT is getting very clever indeed. It seems to be a useful summary in any event (though goodness knows how it made sense of the SG's case):
https://x.com/FareTheeWellSir/status/1861805605024895198

Himdia was getting cross on Bluesky when I checked, and that was before the KC said that a bloke without a GRC is..., err, a bloke.

That sounds like a very encouraging summary. Presumably when interpreting the law the judges have to use as their guiding principle the "intentions of Parliament" -- and it is surely plausible to say that the "intentions of Parliament" cannot have been to systematically disadvantage women??

Likewise the "intentions of Parliament" cannot have been to generate outcomes that are literally incoherent.

So hopefully this all tends towards the judges concluding that Parliament must have intended to preserve the ordinary understanding of sex - at least as the default where it is not (to a sufficiently explicit standard) stated to mean something else??

EDIT: Is it correct to say that the "intentions of Parliament" are the crux for interpretation? I would clarify that IANAL, except that, to me, that looks too much like saying "I am anal"

I’m very much afraid that the court will grab the lifeline from EHRC, declare the law a mess requiring parliamentary resolution, and in the meantime find for the Scottish government on a strict literal reading of the legislation. The courts are not concerned with justice but applying the letter of the law, however absurd.

The fact that the Gender Recognition Act has specific exclusions- for succession to titles and peerages etc - doesn’t help, suggesting as it does that otherwise the person is to be treated for all purposes as being of the acquired gender. Says it all that no thought was given to protecting natal females from abuse, but protection of males inheriting titles was right up there.

Hope I’m wrong about the Supreme Court.

How the fuck did we get to the point of deciding that a piece of paper could, for all intents and purposes, change someone's sex.

Trans woman with no GRC = heterosexual man

TW with a GRC - hey presto. A lesbian.

Fucking insane.,

Combined with the fact that you're not allowed to know if they have a GRC.

The hearings from yesterday are online on the court's page. Probably tomorrow they'll upload the videos from today.
You can look up the case on the page and then there are the links to the videos.
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042.html

I'm also afraid that is the likely outcome...

All the easier to drive a coach and four through the ability of women to organise for their interests.

Ah but apparently you can ask to see their (amended) birth certificate.
Seemingly that's not an offence.
But I'm sure it is somewhere in PC Plod land.

Because being kind to sad men in dresses was more important than a sane laws and a sane, safe society for women, obvs.

The courts are not concerned with justice but applying the letter of the law, however absurd.

I thought in law there are mechanisms by which judges can avoid making absurd decisions if applying the strict letter of the law would lead to an absurd result.

Just catching up with today.
Thanks to all for taking the time to keep us updated.
And a separate thanks to Utopia, for making this excellent big picture point.
This really is the context this is all happening in isn't it?
I also appreciate Chilling's earlier point about the eternal fight.
Depressing, but powerful too.
I'm forever grateful for the day I found FWR and the awakening that has brought.

Ignorance is bliss, but insight lights a fire!

Disagree with the courts applying the letter of the law, however absurd. I can think of a number of cases where the courts have said that an outcome is so absurd it cannot be what parliament meant.

The job of the courts is to interpret the law. They will not go for a meaning that cannot be supported by the words in the law, but nor will they go for a meaning that is absurd unless there is really no other way the words can be interpreted.

I agree with the poorly made law but disagree with the unintended consequences, they were very much intended in my view, the consequences were repeatedly pointed out during the discussions in Parliament and were hand-waved away and dismissed.

Those who wrote and enacted the laws around this knew damn well just how misogynistic and homophobic they were and they cared not.

No bother Marie! Sure, if we didn’t laugh and whatnot…👍

This.

I still go back and read the debates and shake my head in disbelief. So many peers, in particular, predicted everything that has come to pass and they were completely ignored and even belittled for it.

Having been "surprised" in the bedroom after what I thought was a lesbian date with a woman, and I definitely didn't consent to what happened next, I would actually strongly encourage women to come up with their own way to politely check before clothes come off, no matter how feminine s/he looks.

Women will "get it" (unless they're captured in which case did you want to go there anyway?).

Bloody hell, nothings changed has it? Democrats, Labour, Germany, Spain and all the rest. All had it pointed out to them and all still moving ahead with it.

I hope you’re right. However the question is whether they will think the stated law is absurd. The entire drive of the GRA is to create a legal fiction. What follows is
logical, even though disastrous for women. I haven’t read the submissions / tweets so it may be that the FWS advocate AOL has done a good job in highlighting absurdities to a sufficient extent.

When my dad left my mum (for a younger woman, tale as old as time) they had been together 27 years, mum had her own bank account only joint ones and she’d never had her own passport, just a joint one with him (and he could travel on the joint passport without her but she couldn’t do the same!)

Seems utterly bonkers that women could be included on men’s passports as a sort of add on option, and that it was described as a ‘joint’ passport despite the two people not having the same rights to use it.

I just looked it up and they stopped issuing those passports in 1988 (when GB citizens started getting burgundy European style pasdports) but some people still had them for another ten years. My parents must’ve had one of the last ones in use (iirc they split in 1997).

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1957-03-11/debates/047e9877-fa8f-48bd-984f-8c79bbc1aec2/JointPassports

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-10-24/debates/a3f66008-840b-460e-8d3a-4e9903c76c78/FamilyPassports

😱!!

Dear god, I forgot to mention that horrific fact - thank you for reminding us, Betty

Watching the judges appear, over the course of 30 hours, to go from 'it's just a few post-surgery transsexuals' to 'wtaf is going on here!?'

No idea which way this will go but it seems it can't make things worse - either we end up with the status quo of the Haldane judgment and a possible impetus for Parliament to amend the EA, or woman means woman again.

I did think that AON made a questionable start by pursuing the history of patriarchy angle, and thank god for Ben Cooper, but the Scottish Government, true to past form, has done itself no favours.