For Women Scotland in Supreme court - thread 2

[ArabellaScott]

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

Quite.

She'll run rings around the embarrassment of Labour MPs who had their dog eat their homework on the subject.

They could say that there's clearly a problem with the law and that there's a conflict that needs to be addressed in their ruling.

Yes, basically Crawford for SG said that it needed to go back to parliament to resolve the pregnant man stuff.

I know. We feel as if we have gone backwards and are fighting all over again on grounds that we had thought were secured.

But out of this has come a resurgence of women's rights' awareness and activism. Women have come together in various ways and in various groups to be involved - and I for one appreciate the women I have met and the things I have learnt and understood over the past few years. Didn't want to be here, but there are good things. Certainly I understand much more today than I did, what it means to be a woman.

They could say that there's clearly a problem with the law and that there's a conflict that needs to be addressed in their ruling.

But does that actually have much formal weight? Is parliament required to respond? Or does it just add to a diffuse political pressure in favour of clarification, which is not likely to result in action until the governing party is confident it has more to lose by failing to grab the nettle than by actually grabbing it?

Also, you could add in to this that Kemi Badenoch is probably the last person Labour would want here atm as opposition leader, given her stance and history in this area.

The reason she would be crucial is she had actually started doing the work that the Parliament Petitions had put in montion.

ie changing the wording of the EA.

What would be good is if she could, or rather whether Labour would, take on to continue what she started.

She mentioned how the snap election stopped her finishing it.

And as others have posted, and many have said all along, it seemed unclear how a court could change how a law is written.

But as the EHRC has made it clear it is hard to use the law and written, and if the court echos this, then there is more of a chance that something might be done.

But of course if it is passed to the W&EC, they could Stonewall, in both senses of the word, this process for months, probably years.

Imagine Rosie Duffield's work load if this was passed on to them.

I think there is some hope of FWS winning on interpretation. While the black and white letter of the law has a conflict between the ‘all purposes’ in the GRA and use of sex in the EA, the general rules of interpretation mean they could conclude Parliament can’t possibly have intended the consequences set out by FWS and sex must be limited to biological sex. My (not very expert!) feeling is that that’s a hard battle because the actual express wording isn’t that ambiguous and if Parliament were repealing bits of the GRA when passing the EA, it’s hard to argue they just forgot about it. But it is also quite compelling that there would essentially be no single sex services if SG are right, and so what’s the point in much of the EA?

If they don’t go so far as to interpret it that way, I expect they will express a lot of dissatisfaction with the drafting and interaction between the legislation. That’s not super unusual in my experience, there are several acts in my practice area which are poorly drafted and much lamented by judges. But because they manage to muddle through and they’re not public law type things, they don’t get amended by parliament.

What would be different here (I hope!) is that the social and political fallout of the court finding in favour of the SG would be HUGE. People would be outraged if women’s groups can’t meet, lesbians can’t exclude men, etc. If our highest court says that’s the law of our country, I can’t see parliament being able to bury that.

Yes, basically Crawford for SG said that it needed to go back to parliament to resolve the pregnant man stuff.

As this has already been accepted as work that Parliament needed to do, achieved through petitioning Parliament, this would be quite an expensive method to just duplicate what has already been done!

Keep hoping someone will quote some part of the legal system that does give the Supreme Court power to do that.

The Courts role is to follow the law "to the letter".

It is MPs role to write laws that make sense, and not indirectly legalise discrimination against women.

Are MPs adult enough to admit a mistake, and even more unlikely, are they decend enough human beings to recognise that women's sex based rights have been undermined?

No is the answer.

Will Kemi Badenoch at the despatch box and Rosie Duffield as a lone voice on the W&EC, be enough of a pressure to see this work started.

The Beclowning of SG - A Series of Haikus

Scottish Government
Have beclowned themselves again.
Males having smears, what?

Relying on an
Adoption analogy
Which makes no sense

Lesbians are not
Attracted to men with a
piece of paper, mate

All across Scotland,
People are looking at this
Nonsense and laughing.

A pure laughing stock.
The Enlightenment? Aye right.
They've bawsed it tae fuck.

What would be different here (I hope!) is that the social and political fallout of the court finding in favour of the SG would be HUGE. People would be outraged if women’s groups can’t meet, lesbians can’t exclude men, etc. If our highest court says that’s the law of our country, I can’t see parliament being able to bury that.

Some days I too have these Pollyanna thoughts about the great British public

@IwantToRetire you’re right - the court can’t force parliament to reconsider the law. They can only interpret the law as it is. But they can explain the consequences of the law parliament has been made and question if that’s what they meant, and you’d be reliant on lobbying and political pressure to then fix it.

Labour has been adamant the EA is fine and working, so a judgment saying otherwise would at least be a challenge to that!

Yes perhaps wishful thinking. But I do think that’d drive home the points GC feminists have been making for a long time and average people might pay more attention.

I saw a great comment on Twitter the other day about FWS which said that basically 3 women on Mumsnet looked at what was going on and said 'naw, not having that' and by basically challenging all this shit in Scotland, have led a whole country of women to also say 'naw, not having that' and are holding institutions, activists and politicians to account. It's an absolute shit show up here but the activism which has been inspired by FWS, MBM etc and feminist networks across Scotland has been nothing short of awe inspiring. Ordinary women have become involved, politically engaged and have educated themselves on really complicated pieces of legislation, policy and points of law (often better than the politicians who should know this shit).

Genuinely, that's excellent. 👌🏼

Its your Weapons Grade Dead Cat Event.

Terrific!

That has been mentioned on these forums previously, but now I see it in connection with people (or their families) not wanting (them) to be gay (due to external pressure or internalized rules and beliefs), so instead they "change sex" to make the situation appear less gay, which is pretty offensive to all involved (actual dysmorphia cases excluded).

But if the purpose of the GRA was this, now that you can have gay marriage, isn't it a superfluous law? And will those who created the GRA accept the judgement that they were trying to prevent gay marriage instead of solving the actual problem of marriage equality?

I think that is really something to take great heart from. I joined MN in 2012 and always read the FWR Board here, which was great. But, when women started to talk about the threat to women's rights from the T agenda and slowly more and more women started to really get it, there has been a whole women's movement started from here. There's so much experience, insight, support and energy, which has created real life groups and we have managed to push back so hard on this. I think everyone should be incredibly proud of what we've all achieved, against tremendous odds.

My prediction - if Harmer Starmer doesn't change his mind b4 election, Wes Streeting will make a bid for leadership on ticket of sex realist. We can but hope 😏

I think the only hope with Starmer, even though he has made some terrible blunders in this area, is that he will side step showing any preference and use the excuse of "the law".

ie he might feel he wouldn't lose face to say the EA has to be re-written because the court says it is unworkable.

And then, which will be the real problem whatever route it takes, is would a re-written EA that specifically says sex is biological, get through a Labour dominated HoC?

This is not a timeline that would have been at all predicted a mere 4 or 5 years ago.

I agree if Starmer looks like he's risking the next election the long knives will come out by which time Wes will probably have amassed significant support.

@RedToothBrush

Great post and I hard agree

@BabaYagasHouse

I also appreciate Chilling's earlier point about the eternal fight.

Thank you! I was trying to find which feminist said this years ago, something about the fight never being over.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes has said that every seven years women
(collectively ) have to fight again for something they had previously taken for granted.

It's eternal vigilance that's needed too. If it wasn't for Theresa May deciding to do a consultation on changes to the GRA we might have sleep walked into an even worse position legally than we are in now.

It's more likely to get through the lord's that the hoc imho.

It was that consultation which brought me to Mumsnet and FWR, which in turn woke me up to exactly what had been happening while I was busy with other things. Absolutely true to say I was radicalised on Mumsnet.