FWS v Scottish Ministers will be handed down Weds 16th April at 9.45am

[IDareSay]

The Ruling in FWS v Scottish Ministers will be handed down next Weds 16th April at 9.45am It will also be streamed via the UKSC website, so you can watch live.

https://x.com/ForWomenScot/status/1910272949350695371

I don't have a problem with employers being able to fire men who turn up for work in drag. If people come to work in blackface they could be fired so why not when they are in womanface?
Lots of employers have a dress code especially for customer facing roles. In a healthcare setting many patients will be uncomfortable with a man dressed up as a woman treating them. Why should employers have to pander to blokes taking the piss & getting their jollies by dressing up as women on company time?

It is a reasonable parallel to wonder should I be entitled to turn up to work dressed as Galadriel. Or a Klingon. (And require addressing by Klingon titles to respect my identity.) Work place boundaries should not be more indulgent for some than others, and neither Galadriel nor a Klingon would reflect a possibility of making today (and other people's reactions) a nice sexual experience. That's another large boundary; using non consenting others in sexual experiences. And validation experiences.

I wonder about a judge's reaction to someone requiring to present in costume or character within a court proceding: like workplaces there are dress codes and appropriate boundaries. But should someone in any costume be less entitled to housing rights, equality before the law? No.

It's about relationship with state. And that should be the limit of it.

That's a significant point. The GRA is acting to undermine the relationship of the female sex with the state.

And if that isn't sex discrimination, I don't know what is.

I don’t think it has. The U.K. government website still says that an interim gender certificate is granted if a person is married, and their spouse has to sign it (or they divorce) before a full certificate is granted. As there is not a separate process in Scotland, this means surely that the spouse can exit the marriage.
That said, looking for interim GRC as a grounds for divorce in Scotland gives mixed results - although the CAB does give advice on this. However, I imagine that parties would still have to resolve the financial and childcare arrangements (this latter is still necessary in Scotland before divorce unlike in England) as appropriate, which generates a cost and takes time.

I am firmly of the belief that there is no such thing as men’s/woman’s clothes and that if an organisation has a dress code it needs to be applied to everyone. If fishnet tights and leather mini skirts are deemed to be inappropriate work attire, this should be applied to everyone, regardless of their sex.

Exactly.

This links to the Equality Network who were behind the push for the spousal exit clause to be removed as part of the marriage & civil partnership bill in Scotland :

https://www.equality-network.org/scottish-parliament-committee-recommends-approval-of-equal-marriage-bill/

This part details where that’s covered:
“The report concludes four months of evidence taking and consideration by the Committee. The Committee’s report also recommends the inclusion in the bill of amendments proposed by the Equality Network and Scottish Transgender Alliance, including:

• That the spousal veto for gender recognition be removed“

In the final bill that came into force, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2014/5/part/4 if you go to the foot of this page, it covers what EN pushed for. I’m not good at reading ‘legalese’ but I think this covers what happened in Scotland re the spousal exit clause.

Just to add, at the time the GRRB was going through the Scottish Parliament, it was incredibly difficult to find anyone who could give a legal opinion on the implications of the GRRB on marriage rights in Scotland because I don’t think many people have ever dealt with it.

Thank you.

I've read it several times... and am baffled..... I think it says that the spousal exit clause does still apply in Scotland, where a divorce can be granted before the full certificate is given. But I'm happy to be corrected on that. Those sentences are mad.

And we've got the growing problem of men planting cameras in women's changing rooms and toilets. The only thing limiting this right now is that it's difficult for men to go in the female toilet. Make it all mixed sex and there will be videos of all of us using the loo online. Our privacy in public spaces will be gone.

Yeah, it’s as clear as mud. There’s a clear intention from the recommendations after the stage 1 committee report to include removing the spousal exit clause & there’s something in the bill that addresses it, but what it means or what the specific clause does in the final draft of the bill that came into force, I’m not clear.

It seems to be the defining feature of anything legal that involves gender: conflicting jibberish, and no one has the faintest clue what it means.

Bets being taken now on whether the result of the judges trying hard for months to work it all out is that they come back and say they're blowed if it makes any sense to them either and the government should probably sort it.

(They won't.)

The problem with this kind of dismissal, and the suggestions earlier that “gender reassignment” doesn’t need to be a protected characteristic under the law, is that gender reassignment is still a treatment being carried out under the NHS, which gives it a degree of validation that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

Slippery slope arguments are sometimes nonsense, but here we have the reality that transsexual men (and some women) knowingly and deliberately opened the door to cross dressers and fetishists.

Until the medical model is broken down, which I believe it eventually will be as I believe it’s no better than snake oil, we are going to be stuck with having to protect these behaviours in men as the NHS is offering the ultimate validation: that transgenderism is a real thing.

I like the wording in this article. It nicely makes the point in the first paragraph that you can’t call something single sex if you let people self ID into it. Then goes on to say that currently people with a GRC would be allowed in - but this could change after Wednesday.

I’m still not holding my breath for a win for FWS, but it’s nice to see a clear explanation about self ID and a signal that at least that element will be managed differently.

Trans people who self-identify as women face single-sex space ban

https://www.thetimes.com/article/68423de4-3325-4af8-b2f0-7c7f12900899?shareToken=06d058f17769e544efeb428fbbc2a79b

That headline completely erases women who claim to identify as men. As for the non-binaries as i understand it that nonsense has no weight in British law although too many places <cough-Virgin Active-cough-schools-cough-the NHS-cough> have indulged it.

I'm sure everyone would agree that a dress code that frowns on leather mini-skirts and fishnet tights in the workplace should apply to all workers.

I sort-of agree about men's/women's clothes, but I think there's a difference between a man deciding he'd like to wear a smart skirt to work instead of trousers, and a man wearing clothes of a kind and in a manner that suggest he's trying to present himself as a woman.
If this is part of a collection of behaviours including demanding to use the women's toilets or changing rooms, the wearing of what are traditionally considered 'women's clothes' takes on a significance beyond the purely sartorial.

Sorry I've just realised that this is a derail from the main topic.

Still, at least it keeps the mind occupied while waiting nervously for The Judgment😱

I'm sure everyone would agree that a dress code that frowns on leather mini-skirts and fishnet tights in the workplace should apply to all workers.

We used to have a woman who dressed like this in my office, complete with tight push-corset. I don't much care what other people wear to work but I did find this a bit much!

Important some have been saying that the losing the case could mean the GRR Scotland act would automatically come into play. MBB explain this is not the case the Scottish Government would have to vote on it again. Would they do this in an election year? With Scottish Labour against? Swinney may duck out.

UK Supreme Court case: where could the decision leave the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill?
https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2025/04/14/uk-supreme-court-case-where-could-the-decision-leave-the-gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill/

hm, it is complicated.
The GRA 2004 seems to have been amended by the Equal Marriage Act 2014, specifically sections 4E c-f. This says a Sheriff must give a spouse notice of the GRC (see below). That is all.
however, the 1976 Divorce (Scotland) Act was amended by the same 2014 Act. So section 1B of the divorce act gives the granting of an interim GRC as a grounds for divorce subject to section 3B which was inserted by the 2014 Act. (my bold)
3B says 1b does not apply where a person is granted a full GRC having had an interim GRC.
It also says that 1b continues to apply despite a full GRC being granted by the Sheriff.

So I am not a lawyer but I wonder if these seemingly contradictory sentences are because, reading the GRA, it seems that in Scotland a sheriff can grant a full GRC after six months where the parties remain married and the person seeking the GRA does not have a statutory declaration that their spouse consents to remaining in the marriage. In these circumstances, 1B applies. That is, if the person seeking the GRC gains it from the Sheriff in the absence of spousal consent to remain married, one’s spouse getting a full GRC remains a grounds for divorce.
So I don’t think the ‘spousal veto’ was removed, but you would need a lawyer to be sure.

The gov.uk page that links to is really useful:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-of-reasons-related-to-the-use-of-section-35-of-the-scotland-act-1998/html-version#part-4-adverse-effects-in-relation-to-the-operation-of-the-equality-act-2010

This paragraph:

The Bill will adversely affect the operation of the 2010 Act by changing the effect of its requirements on single-sex associations, who will be required to accept, without discrimination, members from a new, larger and different cohort, who would not have met the requirements currently set out in the 2004 Act.

...makes it clear the legislature always envisaged that, say, transwomen could not be excluded from lesbian clubs, but that this was OK because they were a small group who had jumped through lots of procedural hoops 🙄

There's also a reminder that associations...

... also cannot restrict membership to people who are not covered by the gender reassignment characteristic because an association’s membership can only be based on a shared protected characteristic and not the absence of it.

Though in that case, why can't we have TERF Club - an association based on the shared protected characteristic of GC belief?

You deserve a 🥇 for working your way through that!!!

Let's hope that the Supreme Court judgement isn't just as complicated when it gets handed down tomorrow. I have a horrible feeling that we might end up with a similar kind of fudge, with a treasure hunt of sentences and clauses that have to be followed in the right order just to understand whether a male with a £5 lady ticket is a woman or not 😬😬😬

LAPA and Single-Sex Services:
While the specific relationship between LAPA (Likely Affected Person Assessment) and single-sex services is not explicitly mentioned in the Equality Act, it's possible that LAPA could be relevant in certain situations.
For example, if a LAPA is conducting an assessment that suggests a service might be better or safer if provided as a single-sex service (e.g., for privacy reasons or to reduce the risk of harm), this could be a factor in justifying a single-sex service under the Equality Act.

Does anyone have a link to the live stream? I can’t seem to find one on the UKSC website??

I thought LAPA in the context of this thread meant “legitimate and proportionate aim”, as in the circumstances where a single sex exemption could be applied.

Its a slightly sloppy contraction of 'a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim' which is in the Act.