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

I can't parse out all the double negatives!

Swift seemed a bit unclear on the nature of exemptions, on my reading.

I.e. that you start from an all inclusive mixed sex standpoint, where all segregation is discrimination.

There’s two designs GLP will have to chose to ‘fight for’ to follow this through for out-of-home toilet provision in the country:

1.Convert everything to the completely private, sound resistant, mixed sex toilet design with sinks and hand dryers inside each room, which legislation and building regs say mixed sex should be. My research shows this is more dangerous for everyone but least dangerous for healthy men. Maximum privacy for everyone but Health and Safety is reduced. It will be hugely expensive to do this choice, reducing provision as more space is needed with each room having its own facilities and greater maintenance. They are proven to contain more pathogens. Only having these fully private designs is discriminatory towards certain disabilities (eg collapsible conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes) age (children getting attacked, elderly collapsing), sex (women self exclude, women getting attacked), religious groups (who won’t use mixed sexed facilities). Compared to now, there will be more deaths in public toilets and more sexual assaults. There’s a comparator between unisex v single sex designs which can be used to come to these conclusions. Shown on the ‘keep toilets safe’ picture for just one of the disadvantages below.

2.Scrap several layers of legislation and building regulations so everyone can use all existing toilet cubicles with door and partition gaps and sinks that everyone can use outside the cubicle. This will not be well received. It will be a nightmare for voyeurism, indecent exposure and sexual offence laws. There are specific clauses on lavatories in legislation, such is the problem. There’s going to be a problem with what to do with urinals. So more expense. Women are more likely to self exclude due to everything listed above. Most men won’t like it either. It’s still discriminatory towards various groups although it is more difficult to completely risk assess as this design has never been tested as a mixed sex design - it would be a first. Mixed sex designs have been private with floor to ceiling enclosure. I predict designs would change to go private for those that could afford it. The only time I have heard it’s been used is in schools with predictable results as shown in WRN pictures. The designs in some schools have gone private and mixed sex and unsurprisingly there’s problems with sex, drugs, dirt, vandalism and even fatalities inside the cubicles.

Practically these private designs, especially if mixed sex, don’t work for Health, Safety and Welfare reasons.

How do you differentiate between types of men? If female toilets are open just open to the men who identify as women this is still a safeguarding risk. There are men in this country who have pretended to be trans in women’s toilets as the reason to be there when they assaulted women. They were convicted under male names and pronouns.

A few other thoughts: It’s been years since accessible toilets were called disabled toilets. I know it’s the common way to describe them but it’s shoddy to refer to them as such in court. As for ‘humiliation’ in using them, that’s disablist.

People who need to use the accessible toilet don’t get to choose the toilet to match their sex or gender. When there’s only one toilet in a facility, no one does. It’s common sense.

Some ambulant people, who can be classed as disabled, are particularly safer in the single sex toilets as they have conditions where they may collapse without warning such as those with epilepsy, diabetes or vascular conditions. Together, millions of people have these conditions.

So the main default provision should be single sex, with door gaps. That means a single sex area in front of the cubicle doors. And single sex meaning single sex, except for cleaners/maintenance staff and young children in the care of an opposite sex adult.

GLP's argument seems to be that you can provide single sex toilets so that you are complying with the law, but then just let TW in the womens and TM in the men's because no one is going to be policing them.

No! Not me! Michelle Shipley. It's her legal submission as part of the Sex Matters intervention.

Or is it that it's lawful to provide mixed-sex toilets that only allow women and some men to use them whilst excluding other men? I can't work it out.

The GLP KC Daniel Stilitz suggested that the comparator should be for a 'decades long TW'.

"FWS determines sex but not who is the appropriate comparator. In my example, a decades long TW, the most appropriate factual comparator in that case is cis woman, not a cis man."

Surely this is totally not what the GLP want?

Decades long would mean that the TW would have to start socially transitioning at minimum age 18, plus one decade would be 28, but he specified decades (plural) so at least 38 before he could use a woman as a comparator. And that's if he has a GRC and full medical intervention.

This is not what the GLP promised the trans community at all.

Have they lost sight of what it is they are trying to achieve?

It’s also just complete bollocks

Did FWS not determine the appropriate comparator in a GR discrimination case for a man with the PC of GR is another man without the PC of GR?

Or that men with a GRC who say they are women are still men after FWS, but men who say they are women but don’t have a GRC are women

To date they’ve got quite far with the idea that TIMs have all been through a massive, lengthy process which weeds out any chancers. They probably think they can hide behind it again.

Yes! Such a daft argument.

I just read the whole transcript and it really feels like Swift is exasperated by GLP and their odd reading of legislation and insistence that lower courts rulings in the years before should over rule the FWS judgement. They seem to be doing his head in a bit! Or have I read that wrong?

A Judicial Review hearing of the High Court, is a very specific area of administrative law.

It exists to ensure that public bodies, act within a way that they are legally entitled to do.

And it can consider the acts of government ministers in their discharge of duties. ( Boris suspension of parliament was a good example)

As part of the process the applicant has to show they have grounds for a judicial review, either in written or oral hearings.

A case can be dismissed as having no merit without a hearing.

if the judge decides they have a case then ordinarily, they would reschedule to hear full arguments.

In this case the original GLP application went to hearing, the KC was sent away after some assistance from the judge to re frame their arguments in a legally competent fashion.

The judge also decided to hear the reframed arguments of the GLP, to decide if they had a case and at all, and to determine if the EHRC acted in an unlawful way, all in one go.

IMHO the GLP in their submissions were still incoherent, hence the judges quite argumentative stance, which one might expect at a preliminary hearing.

The judge, then today heard what defence the EHRC had against the idea that their advice was contrary, or outside of the scope of the SC rulings.

The SC ruling was in plain English. And it sat firmly down on all the case law such as Croft, that went before the EQA. Ergo they are dead letter, have no meaning anymore.

BTW neither does the GRA as will come to fruition.

In trying to think of an analogy the application is based on

My mummy said i could have a chocolate treat at three o clock, but she didn’t say whether that was am or pm.

Dad said obviously that was pm because you would be asleep at 3am.

well i might be awake….

it is utter bollocks and we should all be eating raw beetroot with marmite spread on it should they win.

But even if they do, they are stating that this is the barest minimum point at which transwomen could use women as a comparative. So it throws all the others TW under the bus.

They appear to be making this sacrifice the basis of their legal submissions.

I think they just want something, anything in law that accepts some men really are women.

They had it with the GRA but FWS re-established that it's a legal fiction ith absolute limits, so now they need to re-establish a beachhead.

It doesn't matter how small and slight it is, it's crossing the barrier.

Once the law accepts that full, non qualified womanhood can be something other than natally female, they can chip away at the criteria to widen it.

And with an arbitrary line, which any non sex based line is going to be, it will always be possible to show how unfair it is that two people who are in almost identical situations face have very different outcomes just because they fall on different sides of a barrier that was arbitrarily determined and could so easily be moved just that little bit over.

They did it once by bypassing legal blessing and moving the men/women social barrier in practice further and further into the realm of men through media and insitutional capture. FWS stopped that.

So I think they are now trying to replay the same tactic with the law that blocked them and try to get well meaning judges to move specific provisions from the non arbitrary sex line onto an arbitrary gender line that is far more vulnerable to challenge (for good reason - TRAs can entirely reasonably and convinceingly demonstrate any given gender line is artbitrary and unjustified becsuse fundamentally, it is. Their dishonesty is the claim that the new gender line is any less so.)

The BBC have covered the case.

It's very concerning that Bridget Phillipson's KC was arguing for trans inclusion on a "case by case" basis. It sounds like Phillipson just wants to return to Stonewall law.

"Zoe Leventhal KC, representing the minister for women and equalities, argued that the guidance may have been too simplistic in suggesting that, for example, a trans woman should not use a women's toilet in a public space. She suggested that it could be judged on a case-by-case basis."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddrjq9764yo

Judged by whom, on what criteria? Passing? Literal toilet police, like the TRAs falsely claim GC women want? Best job ever, it would be hilarious!

Yes, the ones who pay attention won’t like it. But it will default in practice to allowing any of them in, as before, because “case by case, proportionate, legitimate”

Exactly. Any crack will mean the TRAs will be able to say that service providers may be legally liable for discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment, and that will have a chilling effect on providing women only spaces. I’m concerned that no one (the judge, EHRC, Philipson) seems to take the possibility of discrimination or harassment of women particularly seriously.

Surely anyone in the legal profession would understand that invisible criteria isn't any criteria at all.

You can't let men in based on criteria you can't see, don't know about, and couldn't verify anyway.

And are they really they saying that it's only going to be confined to toilets? What about changing rooms? Sport?

Plus, there will be a whole host of men absolutely outraged that access to women spaces is now dependent upon surgery.

Surely that's a violation of human rights in itself.

It's so arbitrary and unenforceable.

Reddit thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/s/G5MNUFKOJl

Exactly. We all know why the GLP have decided to focus on the toilet issue re these guidelines.

I am utterly disgusted by this. Will write to my MP (again).

I had thought the tide had turned with Phillipson.

Yes. The entire focus here was 'trans' and GR - in virtually every case the hypothetical person being discussed a man identifying as a woman, with scarcely a peep about the invisible women whose rights were under threat - represented by 'Single sex' rather than invoked as human beings . Glad Sex Matters brought them into the light.

As a bit of a diversion, Dennis Kavanaugh was reminded by the Judge's comment about “This is not a court of social justice” of some of the judicial put-downs he's been on the receiving end of
https://x.com/Jebadoo2/status/1988891728774938789
which lead to a request for more examples
https://x.com/blablafishcakes/status/1988905275990876229
and the various examples that branch off from there are joyous.

Just completely ridiculous and impractical. How on earth could service providers possibly comply with this?