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

Is this why the government are refusing to pass the new guidance? Are they awaiting the outcome of this?

This is very very worrying. Maya said in her vox-pop that the govt is a “neutral” party to the case. (With possibly a barely detectable eye-roll.)

This doesn’t sound very neutral.

Supposedly they've asked for the EHRC to make a cost assessment.

I'm beginning to suspect its all fudge, all the way down.

The govt lawyer said the govt were neutral, and then came out with that weak pish and threw women under the bus for a quiet life. Yes, it's worrying.

How does case by case work if you are a Gym Owner who could be sued by a female user if you have another user who is obviously male using the gym? This alone might cause distress and be in contravention of their legally held Forstater beliefs?

Add to this a member of staff who deliberately ignores complaints by women behaviour because they are a TRA.

How does that ACTUALLY work on a case by case?

Otherwise it just means that an employer who is pro TRA can just pretend there's no problem and hey presto they are 'case by case' within the law! It means women have absolutely no real world way of objecting because the onus then becomes on them to PROVE that someone is being problematic. That's not ok because they are the vulnerable party in this situation. The onus should be on those proposing this as a 'solution' to prove before installing a case by case policy that this policy isn't deeply flawed because there is a clear and obvious known substantial risk to this approach (which we have the data to back this point up).

It's bollocks.

If this is the stance they are going to try to take, we are going to have to go back to court aren't we?

Zoe Lethanthal KC is a Green Party councillor, she stood as a GP candidate at the last general election.

So.how is she representing the govt?

Not sure what the rules are around barristers and conflicts of interests but presumably on the basis that she acts on instructions and her personal and political beliefs don’t come into it. It doesn’t look right though imo.

How does that ACTUALLY work on a case by case?

"Polite notice: we may or may not put peanuts in your peanut-free meal, on a case-by-case basis."

Makes sense if you think you're serving the peanuts, not the people with the peanut allergies.

She left GP last year.

https://kenilworth.nub.news/news/local-news/kenilworth-town-councillor-and-former-parliamentary-candidate-leaves-green-party-246110

Ahh interesting. I wonder why.

Michelle Shipworth’s statement was a tough read. The GLP surely cannot fail to see her testimony should not have been needed. Women should not need to bring trauma to a courtroom simply to make a point. Reliving that incident must have been awful. Jolyon Maugham should be ashamed.

As Helen Joyce said some people are like Japanese soldiers after the war.

They are refusing to act on it immediately due to internal pressures from their own backbenchers and 'trans allies' most of whom are still firmly TWAW, and so are refusing to accept the judgement.

Case by case for toilets just means self ID. Who has the time and resources to assess every man before he goes into the ladies and on what basis could they possibly select the men who can enter. I’m not surprised that Labour are still not prepared to support the rights of women and girls. They’ve probably got a majority of TWAW MPs

Daniel Stilitz KC, for the GLP, said that the EHRC had given "categorical and clear advice" that transgender people should not be allowed to use toilets "which were appropriate to their lived gender".

As we know from that BBC schools video that there are over 100 genders, unfortunately, I suspect most of us are unable to use that perfect gender matching toilet.

Happily public toilets seem to be divided by sex, not gender.

(Wrong quote attached!)

I'm surprised that any barrister would argue that the exceptions that allow lawful discrimination in the EA can be decided on a 'case by case basis'.

This is the equivalent of saying that the golf club can be male only, but some women are allowed on a 'case by case' basis. It's difficult to understand how that wouldn't be unlawful discrimination.

Also, wasn't all this covered in the SC judgement?

This makes a lot of sense. Is this why they keep banging on about Croft? They want to revive it because the GRA has let them down. Perhaps we will see a new TRA campaign to repeal the GRA so they can return to the previous caselaw.

Yes. Which is in denial of the whole point of single sex legal discrimination which is in order to provide a group with something that cannot be achieved in the same way in a mixed sex group. It requires exclusion of other groups from the space. Explained clearly by the SCJ, so Swift will have this to hand.

The proportional disadvantage to men as a sex class in being denied access to women's facilities - because it is impossible to create legally or practically a means for it to be some men but not others, it has to be an open door to all - is far lesser than the impact upon all women as 52% of the population, all of whom lose single sex provision if a man of any identity can use it, both those in there in the moment and all those women who will ever use it in the future.

Mentioned in the judgment in regard to article 8 - rights and freedoms proportionally limited where they affect other people's rights and freedoms.

If you have both sexes in a toilet cubicle or room, you have to change the design of every toilet to be a mixed sex design. That means scrapping Designs C and D in Document T, variations of which cover most of the toilet provision in the country.

The alternative is to change Health and Safety legislation and Building Regulation and ignore doing risk assessments and Equality Impact Assessments in the process.

Which one Zoe Leventhal KC?

Quite!

It goes to show how even the barristers have not read it in full.

What was it we all heard Starmer say in the HoC this week about his commitment to single sex spaces?

Captain Flipflop in action, or is she off message?

Yet again 'case by case' gets rolled out by the TRAs as meaning 'we get to decide on the basis of each individual person'. Clearly that’s preposterous and unworkable. And it doesn’t mean that. It’s been discussed many times before on here.

Here are a couple of quotes from posts which made things helpfully clearer:

Case by case meant that each group that wanted to exclude one sex, had to be able to justify why that was necessary in their case. [my bold]
Stonewall spread the lie that case by case meant women’s groups had to justify excluding each and every man who claimed he was a woman individually on a case by case basis

Case by case was supposed to be the overall case not individuals. So the case would be for example- is this an area where staff change into work uniforms? Yes then it must be single sex. That's the regulations.
It was interpreted as referring to each person and has just been 'does this person want access? Yes so let's allow that'

ETA: the fact that they’re still banging on with the clearly incorrect interpretation appears either wilful or worryingly dim. Though IANAL.

The 'small number of fully transitioned men' was tried and destruction tested on women. It was called the GRA, and it led through a trail of harmed and excluded women, through years of legal procedings, to the Supreme Court judgment.

The TRAs AND MPs seem to want to try and run it again.

THANK YOU to the person who shared the submissions. Sex Matters and Maya's was bloody excellent as always, at least someone was there as the voice for women. The sole point of single sex women's spaces is to meet the needs of women. No man is a sort of woman.

Spot on.

We safeguard people with peanut allergies.

Why?