What does the SC ruling mean for schools and youth organisations?

[JellySaurus]

What does the SC ruling mean for schools and youth organisations?

Both for the children and for the employees and volunteers.

Yes and the Equality Act applies

And, with a bit of luck, lesbian groups.

I suppose you could rename things so Children Guiding and People's Institute.
😁

Oh yeah - sorry they mentioned lesbians above that paragraph.

We know there are many formal complaints currently going through schools where the schools have refused to act lawfully. Ofsted and the DfE need to make a statement and support those parents who are rightly trying to hold schools to account. Parents now have clarification in law to support them. But things won't change unless parents complain.

Does this affect the whole of the UK, and not just Scotland?

Yes!

Not Northern Ireland though - could someone clarify?

A commentator yesterday said it didn't apply and I don't know if this is correct or if there is different legislation there.

Thank you, @2fallsfromSSA.

Does this also mean that they should stop pretending to gender-confused children that they are anything other than their sex? How does that interact with the PC of gender reassignment ('proposed')?

But in order to create a single sex space (which is discrimination) you have to be able to explain your reasoning for excluding the opposite sex.

Girl guides had a single sex space, based on whatever arguments they used, but then opened up that space to a small, selected group of men and boys.

They are therefore no longer covered under the single sex exemptions.

The upshot as I see it, for them and all other groups who have claimed the right to be single gender-identity based, using the EA rules to allow them to discriminate, is that they can no longer justify their position. They are discriminating illegally and leave themselves open to challenge.

What strikes me is that there are going to be a whole load of groups doing this, who ignore this ruling and carry on as if nothing has happened.

And the women who want their rights back will now be faced with having to bring strategic cases against these groups, one by one, which we will win, but which will still take up precious time and money that could be spent doing other things.

Eventually it will come to be recognised as too costly to adhere to gender identity instead of sex, but I fear these organisations will not give up easily.

See also all women’s spaces where they used the EA rules to advertise jobs for women only, but explicitly stated that same, small group of men would also be considered. Illegal, all of it.

https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/equity-diversity-and-inclusion/lgbtqplus/trans-and-gender-identity/ I'm wondering if some of this guidance will have to change. Under the bit about bathrooms and changing facilities, the first sentence reads "Trans people should use the facilities they feel most comfortable using."

Okay Equality legislation is devolved in Northern Ireland so this holds for Scotland, Wales and England.

Yes, that will have to change. There will have to be lots of revision of policies because they were giving wrong guidance.

Are you trying to suggest that some women wouldn’t want a woman in jeans and some facial hair in a refuge but they would want a man with a penis who says he was a woman in their refuge?

Where's the line between a butch lesbian and a transman?

Most women have come across a manish looking woman at some point.

No - quite the opposite. I agree totally with the SC ruling and I was very happy yesterday. However, it will now present the issue of trans men being in women’s spaces.

The most logical solution here does seem to be creating third, trans spaces. I personally don’t see why that should be an issue.

Who's going to pay for a 3rd space?

The charities etc., that can be set up?

Absolutely this!

Erm transwomen - they don't want third spaces. They want to be in women's spaces. It's about validation.

@JellySaurusyes they should stop that but they should never have been doing that anyway as the law never said we had to pretend that trans identified people were the actual sex they identified with. That was achieved by lobby groups systematically using it to undermine safeguarding. What the ruling does not address and will take a lot of unpicking is how we got to a point where schools and youth groups became so captured all of their safeguarding frameworks went out of the window. But this ruling meansthat people can have proper conversations that sex means sex, it's immutable and binary. And children are legally entitled to privacy from the opposite sex. It means the conversation can start from a factual and lawful basis rather than the obfuscation we are normally faced with when trying to define what a girl is. Now many schools are so captured it will require a formal complaints process and parents to fight. We will publish something over the weekend and I'll post it here when we do.

I don't see how it's inherently discriminatory to have an organisation that only caters for "people who think they're women", any more than it's discriminatory to have one that only caters for physicists or Harry Potter fans.

Toilets and changing rooms, which in many cases are regulated by law as needing to be sex-specific, are a different matter.

And, also very importantly, it can no longer be claimed that female-specific organisations are discriminatory just for not letting in transwomen.

Basically the Equality Act will no longer be the go to excuse to provide mixed sex girls' provision. To this point, anyone raising concerns was told that the Equality Act ties their hands and there's a right to use the space identified with. That's been roundly put to bed. Those spaces are biologically based.

Sleeping arrangements were mentioned somewhere in the judgement. And changing, privacy, dignity, decency. And that where a space is provided separately for women away from men (girls and boys included in the term), then it excludes all men on the basis of sex, there are no men who would be exceptions.

So yes, parents have the right to require that 'single sex' actually means what the law has been clarified as meaning, and to follow that law. The Equality Act is no longer a nicely wibbly, confused excuse. This doesn't mean that provision shouldn't and wouldn't be made for a child who wants a different space to the sex based one provided.

I would think agencies like Girl Guides will have to change their wording and can no longer call themselves single sex, but the important part is that girls are not forced into mixed sex sleeping and showering and changing arrangements on the basis of adult political beliefs that are not lawful.

I've been in a women's toilet with a transman. Clearly a woman but with facial hair.

Any transwoman I've seen is clearly male. One I know is 6'4" and with male hips so the gait is totally different

Eh?
I've quoted myself but I meant to quote the person who said Charitys could pay for it.

How much money do you think it will take for every building to change their loos to incorporate a 3rd toilet.

The other thing that's likely to happen pushing a 3rd space it's the disabled which often doubles as a baby change becomes that 3rd space which isn't fair on the disabled people who faught for them in the first place.