Good piece on current misreading of the SC ruling

[Nightingalenight]

From Akua Reindorf, commissioner for the EHRC. Her review of Essex University’s deplatforming of Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman was so helpful - back in 2021! - to get my thoughts straight around the Equality Act - helped me to challenge my employer at the time. She’s equally clear and incisive here.

Ill-informed challenges to Supreme Court decision help nobody

https://www.thetimes.com/article/f89ecc90-d81e-4f92-967b-8b6309cbb65f?shareToken=d4e1b4913d950de78b582ea427c8d64e

Really good. Loved this bit - no emotion ir bias involved.

Thank you for the share token. Good, clear article.

Great article, thankyou for the share token Nightingale

Great article.

Another assertion that has confidently been made is that an employer or service provider must justify excluding trans people from single-sex provision in accordance with their lived gender, and that this must be done on a case-by-case basis. Reference has been made to the legal justification test: “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. Again, this is false.

😎

And there we go.

While it is not compulsory for public things like refuges and gyms to have single sex provision (although this may be discrimination against women not to provide them, looking at Brighton services) they can either be mixed sex or single sex meaning women only. No exceptions. If any men are admitted then it is no longer a single sex service and all men must be able to access it equally.

For women this is everything we needed.

Now lets have accessible additional provisions properly set up for those who wish them, and we can all get on with life.

That is a masterpiece of clear precis. The answer to almost every query or raised 'but but but' so far.

Akua is another of my current heroes, along with NC.

Yes. This article has such brilliant clarity- I’m glad it’s quite short too, as I hope this is the one that ends up doing the rounds as it explains the situation so very succinctly.

IIRC, Reindorf was the lawyer who wrote that paper years ago telling everyone that what the SC has said now was the correct way to interpret the EA, and warning everyone that Stonewall’s interpretation was risky and almost certainly wrong, but employers didn’t listen.

Hell of a burn in that last paragraph.

This is an extremely useful article; thank you for the share.

Love this article. Clear, calm, short, and truthful. One to share - I don't see how anyone can argue with it (not without looking very silly, anyway). The mention of the need to find a way forward to accommodate all people (a third space, obviously, like we've been saying all along) is really good, there's no way anyone can claim that this piece doesn't consider the needs of trans people.

Thanks, Akua is very succinct in her article. Everything is explained clearly, with no fuss.

It was interesting the bit on individual representation and personal interest. I gather from something I read that the Judge who was one of the individual’s put forward now resides in Ireland so the judgement would not have directly impacted them.

Excellent article and thanks for the share.

I didn’t follow this part though: In fact, the judgment says that the Equality Act allows trans men (biological females) to be excluded from the women’s facilities, and trans women (biological males) to be excluded from the men’s. This might happen if, for example, a trans person looks so much like a person of the opposite biological sex that it would be disruptive to accommodate them in the single-sex service.

Can someone please clarify? I thought this was about sex, not appearance?

This is what I’ve been reading. I will be having to deal with this at work. We have unisex loos and male and female. We have one TW - what do I say now? I would say the majority do not object to them using the ladies but do I have to say - use the unisex from now on? Any advice would be useful please.
As for policies - I will need to go through them to ensure we are legally compliant.

Arguably, if your colleague uses the female loo it automatically becomes mixed sex and available to all men. At which point (I think) your organisation risks action on the grounds of discrimination for providing single sex provision for men only. (And I think there are other regulations which cover single sex facilities?) So it doesn’t matter whether women mind or not - none of this is about feelings. Which is what might help you when you explain this.

Another claim being made is that the Supreme Court excluded trans voices, because it refused an application to intervene made by two trans individuals. But the Supreme Court does not hear evidence about lived experience; it considers legal arguments.

(Italics my own)
Imagine having the arrogance, the brass neck, the sheer entitlement to think that your 'lived experience' would be of relevance to a Supreme Court ruling.

It reminds me of the Mitchell And Webb sketch, Send Us Your Reckons.

"You might not know anything about the issue but I bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon?"

It's about perception. If a trans identifying woman passes sufficiently to be perceived as a man by users of a women only space, she can be lawfully excluded.

The full decision explains this, and that's what the article is quoting..

The perception of others is part of the Equality Act 2010 - you can be the victim of racist, homophobic, ageist, etc abuse if the abuser perceives you to be something even if you're not. You could be the victim of homophobic abuse even if you are straight, because the person abusing you thinks you are gay.

Thanks that’s my understanding. This is going to be a drama I am going to have to gird my
loins

Thank you for the share token, that was a good article.

She wrote the Reindorf Report after Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman were deplatformed from an event at Essex University. It brought her to the public eye. Is that what you were thinking of?

She writes with great clarity. I've bookmarked her article because I'm sure I'll be quoting from it for the next year or two. At an event in Swansea in June last year she (and Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater) argued that we didn't need to amend the GRA: that we could achieve our aims in other ways. I had the pleasure of meeting her. I had a weak-in-the-presence-of-beauty experience: I was reduced to incoherent, blushing babble. I wasn't the only one. She must think us GC women from the provinces are flustered idiots!

Is she as beautiful in real life as her photo?

I can’t find who said it now, but one of the KC’s said it was notable that the article didn’t include a disclaimer that it was her personal views and this was significant because it would therefore mean it reflected the EHCR’s position wholly. Will keep searching!

That part of the judgment explains that while single sex spaces are sex based some trans people may have changed their appearance to the extent that there would be arguable discomfort and difficulty for other users in a situation where this may be an issue to the purpose of the group, for example women with trans identities who look very male in a rape crisis support group to the point they are perceived as male. In those cases it would be justifiable to exclude from the single sex group while creating an accessible provision for the people or person in question.

The toilets issue - it's single sex. The judgment is clear on this. If any man under the law is using a women's space it is no longer single sex and yes is open to any man. There is a legal duty to provide single sex facilities. You can provide additional mixed sex/gender neutral ones too, but it isn't relevant whether women agree among themselves to let a particular man in, he cannot use the women's single sex space.

Another way of looking is to say that certain women-only things have special permission to discriminate against men, and that extends to what otherwise would have been perceptive discrimination against people who look like men.