European Court of Human Rights

[HollieHock]

Just head a TRA on LBC saying they are going to take the case there. Please tell me this is not going to start again.

I don’t have a good grasp of this, but have listened to some opinion stating that the ECHR requires a process for gender recognition. We have that via the GRA. RMW’s claim is that the process the ECHR requires needs to incorporate someone with a certificate being entitled to the same rights as the sex the certificate says they are. Other’s aren’t convinced this to be the case

Great news!

Remember GLP has NEVER won a trans case. I think they raised over 500,000 for failed cases so far.

The more money TAs send to GLP the better it is for us. Even good lawyers tend to lose these cases, see the Supreme Court judgement, but GLP are really really bad lawyers. Look at their track record. Green is a win:;
https://labourpainsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/screenshot-2025-01-30-at-08.58.58.png

Agent Joylon is one of the best accidental advocates for women's rights there is. His ability to fundraise for failure bears comparison to other masters like Trump. He certainly deserves all the money he is making to keep his millionaire lifestyle going.

However remember we don't need to fund GLP ourselves to get these wins. Put your money into gardening with our many excellent expert gardeners who actually plant crops, which generally bloom and get great harvests. Joylon takes the seed money and never plants anything a lot of the time.

The UK very rarely loses at the ECtHR (court) since the HRA basically transcribed the ECHR (convention) into UK law. (Prior to that, the Law Lords — at the time the supreme legal body — regularly passed judgments that they must have known would go down in flames in Strasbourg, because UK law was out of step with the convention.) You can bet your mortgage that the SC will have had the relevant paragraphs of the HRA and the ECHR open on their desks as they were writing their judgment.

It's also worth remembering that the ECHR was written around 1950 and hasn't changed much since, and it reflects the political and social priorities of the immediate post-WW2 period. In fact it has been criticised over the years for not being socially progressive enough — for example, it takes no position on the right to abortion (which was illegal in every member state then) or on same-sex marriage, which is still not allowed in several member states. As such, it seems vanishingly unlikely that the court would get involved in trans rights issues, and even less so that it would come down in favour of the trans side.

Mate they are fleecing you. It's a grift!

I'm confused about who is going to bring this case to the ECHR. As I undestand it no transgender organisations applied to be heard at the SC hearing, only two individuals unqualified to be heard.

And I thought GLP weren't taking on any more genderism cases.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5157261-good-law-project-to-cease-taking-on-trans-legal-cases-from-2025-onwards-according-to-angry-trans-reddit

On that thread there was a screenshot of a message, so it wasn't just based on posts on Reddit or Twix.

Or has Jolyon decided that the grift still has legs after all.

Edited for splung.

Jolyon works very very hard to make sure people don't bring up the fact that his first comments on this issue were that women had a point and had to be heard. Before he locked down his twitter account and came back as an absolute weirdo.

They wouldn’t be able to appeal this judgement to the ECtHR as only the parties could do that.

However if a transwomen considers that their ECHR rights have been violated (for example by being turned away from a single sex space because they are not a biological woman) then they could bring that case. It would be a new case. It would start in the appropriate court for the type of claim and, once all domestic routes had been exhausted, go to Strasbourg.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would pay good money to see Upton try and run a discrimination case using the “not a robot” argument through all the levels of the court system.

The Equality Act's provisions on proportionality are wholly in line with the principles the European Court of Human Rights seeks to uphold.

@Motorina I was thinking Dr Upton might be up for this. But no GRC so not sure that they have an argument. (Well I know they can argue that black is white, etc. etc but you see what I mean?)

Also how much TRA support would there be for a case that is arguing that only GRC-wielding men can be women?

I think they might be able to go straight to the ECHR because the existence of the SC ruling is evidence that all alternative remedies have been exhausted.

Maybe enough time has elapsed that Upton now has a GRC or soon will. Go Upton! Would love to see him given a bigger platform.

Shush! TAs should send GLP as much money as they can. It is totally worth it and doesn't help women at all :)

Yes.

GLP are back in the Trans fundraising game. The latest case they are running is nonsense.
https://labourpainsblog.com/2025/04/11/good-law-project-jomo-v-mofo/

They have other trans ones in the pipeline which they announced recently on X which I imagine will also misfire.

Worth remembering one of GLP's successful cases [about Brexit] was quoted in Supreme Court judgement in a discussion about language to show women were real legally.

That's how we got the GRA though

I think I’ll become a plumber specialising in third spaces - make a fortune!

I thought we were out of that now.

Before parting with your hard earned, I advise you to read back the Tribunal Tweets and/or listen in to some of the up coming court cases. It might make you think twice about going the legal route.

The reason we have been so successful in the courts is because a) we have consistently stumped up to support the women taking on this fight b) we now have a number or barristers and solicitors who really know how to argue these cases c) gender ideology does not stand up well to scrutiny and d) there is always at least one moment of utter batshittery from your end that makes even the staunchest of allies raise their eyebrows. In the Sandie Peggy case it was a male doctor insisting they were biologically female.

You can take this to the EHRC, but be prepared that win or lose, you will be giving Nigel Farage an open goal to usher in the Reform party and take us out of the EHRC all together.

That isn't how the ECtHR works. Cases are brought by individuals, or very occasionally by other states, against states, on the basis that X events happened, Y legal process took place, and Z verdict which the appellant doesn't like was returned from the top level of the process. Check out Article 35 of the convention here. https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/the-european-convention-on-human-rights-and-its-protocols

So what would have to happen would be that a trans person would have to want to do something (e.g., use a changing room reserved for the opposite sex), and then they would be turned down (or arrested for going in anyway), and then they would sue the leisure centre (or be taken to court and charged with whatever the actual legal offence is), and it would then go through the UK courts, and end up at the Supreme Court which would say "the leisure centre was within its rights to not allow access to the women's changing rooms to someone who is not a biological woman, per our April 2025 judgment", and then the trans person would submit their case to Strasbourg.

The case last week on which the Supreme Court ruled can't go on to the ECtHR because it was a win for a group of citizens (For Women Scotland) and a loss for the NHS board (although the actual respondents were the Scottish government ministers). A government organisation can't appeal to the ECtHR more or less by definition, because nobody in the management of the East Fife Health Board or the Scottish government has had their human rights reduced by this decision. Jolyon Maugham can announce that he's going it for the shiggles, but it won't get anywhere.

(In fact, had the SC verdict gone the other way it probably wouldn't have been appealable to the ECtHR either, because FWS brought the case in the civil courts against the ministers. Sandy Peggie, the person whose rights were directly affected, wasn't on the docket as far as I know. However, I think I'm right in saying that her employment tribunal case is still going. In the event that she were now to lose that, she could then go through the rest of the legal process and ultimately it might end up at the ECtHR. But in view of the SC ruling this seems vanishingly unlikely, and I assume the health board/Scottish NHS/government will now fold.)

It may also be worth remembering that the SC decision is strictly only about people with a Gender Recognition Certificate. Even if the decision had been appealable to Strasbourg, any verdict in favour of the trans side could only have been valid for people with a GRC, which the majority of trans-activist people don't have because TRAs are all about self-id.

I think bringing a claim to the ECHR is a plausible option. I would love to see Dr Upton as claimant and RMW as counsel. Better than Netflix!

I also think it’s pretty much a dead cert that that ECHR would say this falls within the UK’s margin of appreciation and send them back home with nothing to show for it.

How would anyone get such a case heard though? Surely any case based on the premise that an existing SC decision was wrong would be summarily dismissed.

I'm not sure what you mean by "such a case", can you clarify? (It's probably my own fault as I mentioned a lot of cases in my post! 🙏😂)

Oh yes PLEASE.

The hypothetical transwoman. I know real life is more complex, but, if SC has said black is not white, how can they bring a case based on an assertion that it is?

Or is it that they have to prove that black not being white has adverse human rights consequences and therefore EA needs rewriting?