Good Law Practice launch a EHCR/Supreme Court challenge over toilets

[fromorbit]

After raising over 418K it turns out the GLP's amazing legal case is all about toilets. Details:

https://archive.is/TWRTl

No doubt it will fail like most of their previous legal cases.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5336208-good-law-project-suing-the-ehrc-and-bridget-phillipson-letter-before-action?page=1

From TT

A reminder that our reporting is not verbatim or a transcript. We report what we hear in good faith. JRs are largely legal argument and can be difficult to precis.

From TT

Notes will be available at the end of the day.

I will return around 6pm to upload TT's reporting when they post it.

I suspect they have had legal advice recommending they post their reporting after the case has finished for the day.

Has McCloud taken a case all the way through the courts or do you mean he is starting at the lowest court now? I presume in Ireland?

I asked both Grok and Chat GPT to analyse the afternoon summary, the strength of the legal arguments and the likely outcome. Slightly startled that both thought GLP have a decent chance. Below is the summary from Grok:

Likely Outcome

Claimants have a strong case on multiple grounds:

1. *EHRC guidance misstates the law* (goes beyond FWS).
2. *Creates indirect discrimination* without PMOALA defence.
3. *Breaches EHRC duties* (irrational, unbalanced, rushed).
4. *1992 Regs allow trans-inclusive toilets*.

Judge’s tone: Engaged, probing, not dismissive. Pushed EHRC on:

• Why no PMOALA?
• Why no sensitivity?
• Why rushed?

Probable result: Guidance quashed or declared unlawful, with declaration that:

• Trans-inclusive toilet policies are *lawful*.
• Exclusion must be *PMOALA-justified case-by-case*.
• EHRC must *consult, balance, explain*.

---

Final Note

This is a landmark case on:

• Scope of *FWS*.
• Limits of *EHRC guidance*.
• Practical operation of *trans-inclusive policies* post-FWS.

Claimants’ arguments are legally robust, factually grounded, and aligned with SC’s caution in FWS.

EHRC’s position appears overreaching and poorly executed.

High chance of success.

McCloud lives in Ireland so is outwith the jurisdiction of UK courts so not able to issue a claim here. The UK is outwith the jurisdiction of the Irish courts so he isn’t able to raise a claim there either.

You have to remember what the LLM are trained on.

You know that AI is frequently wrong?

And the submissions haven't concluded so your query is missing valuable information that hasn't yet been provided. Your query contains the Claimants' case and it can always seem as if they will be successful before the Respondents' arguments have been heard.

The judge is very clear that the SC ruling is the law and the Claimants have to argue otherwise.

Yes, I did wonder about that. And obvs not had the other side yet. Chat GPT wasn't much of a surprise - Grok was though, I thought the aim was to iron all the bias out.

I get that. But he could go through the Irish courts over something in Ireland under Irish law.

By the by.

They're selling 'Banksy' merch T shirts. Wondering if he's given permission.

https://goodlawproject.org/product/banksy-royal-courts-of-justice-mural-t-shirt-double-sided/

https://www.banksy.co.uk/licensing.html

'Only Pest Control Office have permission to use or license my artwork. If someone else has granted you permission, you don’t have permission. I wrote ‘copyright is for losers’ in my (copyrighted) book and still encourage anybody to take and amend my art for their own personal amusement, but not for profit or making it look like I've endorsed something when I haven’t. Thanks.'

I think his issue is with the SC decision though.

Agree. I was wondering what the case the PP mentioned was.

Irish law allows gender identity so he has no beef with that.

He needs a complainant in Great Britain (the Equality Act doesn't apply in Northern Ireland). I think the GLP may be waiting until the ruling in this case before finding someone to go to the ECtHR.

Here. There's more online, but this summarises it.

https://gardencourtchambers.co.uk/legal-challenge-to-european-court-of-human-rights-on-behalf-of-uks-first-trans-judge/

Obviously he could go through the Irish courts over something in Ireland however they have no jurisdiction over the UK courts or UK Parliament or UK laws. McCloud cannot bring any case regarding EA 2010 & the SC clarification of that law either in the UK or Irish courts.

https://goodlawproject.org/case/were-challenging-the-ehrcs-interim-guidance/

The GLP page seems to have their skeleton argument up here, under a 'redacted amended' document embedded in the page.

Headings:

Ground 1: the Guidance misstates the law

Ground 2: in publishing the Guidance, the Commission has acted in breach of its statutory duties under sections 3, 8 and 9 of the Equality Act 2006

Ground 3: in the alternative to Ground 1, the statutory framework or part of it is incompatible with the Convention rights of trans people

(Each heading has extensive burble following.)

Remedy 112. The Claimants seek the following remedies: a. A quashing order, quashing the erroneous elements of the Guidance; b. A declaration that the Guidance is unlawful because it misstates the law and authorises and/or approves unlawful conduct; c. A declaration that in preparing and publishing the Guidance, the Commission acted in breach of its statutory duties under sections 3, 8 and/or 9 of the EqA 2006;

There are more remedies listed, including 'costs', but I can't copy paste them all, sorry.

Just on a point of fact, Semenya is biologically male, hence the masculine looks.

Can you ask it to go deeper? For instance how does the EHRC mis-state the law. Specifically.

and how do the 1992 regs include men, when the equality act was very specific.

That sort of thing?

If Semenya was British, she would be legally biologically female for EA purposes and excludable only under the 'perceptive' heading, so not mandatorily. The fact that Semenya is gonadally male doesn't change that.

Interestingly, Grok's 'critical appraisal' didn't seem to think it changed much:

Overall Revised Strength
Claimants' Case: Still strong (70-80% success odds)—procedural/human rights grounds likely succeed; substantive law contestable but tilted by FWS caveats.
Vulnerabilities: Defense's "clarification, not mandate" and biological-sex harmonization could narrow relief to declaration only.
Likely Outcome: Partial win—guidance quashed/withdrawn elements unlawful; court may order balanced reissue. Sex Matters' intervention strengthens EHRC on SS merits but highlights bias claims.

If Semanya were British it is much more likely that his DSD would have been identified at birth so he would have been registered as male on his birth certificate

Speaking as someone who is adjacent to LLM research (my research was adjacent and my DH’s research was approximately in) they will never iron the bias out, because the bias is in the data that the models are trained on. Humans are biased, humans spout biased nonsense - not to mention there has been a strong trend recently to silence one particular viewpoint, ehem - and LLMs are trained on what humans spout (or are allowed to spout). In building an LLM there is no pruning of the data, or back-end efforts to balance one view over another. For the most part researchers (almost certainly mistakenly) believe that if you throw enough data at the models, the biases will cancel themselves out. That’s as clever as when researchers decided to make fighter pilot seats by taking hundreds of measurements of all the available fighter pilots, and then taking the average of each measurement. They ended up designing a seat that fit not one single pilot.

If he were British he would have been recorded male at birth due to the presence of proper obstetric care.

Surprisingly unlikely actually, although that might change with more perinatal genetic testing. The fact remains that in the UK, people with PAIS and 5-ARD can essentially choose their own sex, depending on treatment choices, and this is a different process from getting a GRC.