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

But what if a peanut really really really wants to be put into a peanut-free meal, because that would validate its identification as a chickpea?

A decision has to be made. Are peanut-free meals:

• a) a validation resource for any foodstuff that doesn't want to be a peanut, or
• b) a provision for people with peanut allergies?

These are incompatible. Choose one.

I wrote to my Labour MP about the delay to the code of practice being published, and in her reply she talked about "case by case" and "nuance'. I wondered where on earth she is getting this from as this position is inconsistent with the SC judgement.

But now after seeing what was argued in court today, it seems this is the position of Bridget Phillipson. Really worrying 🙁

Yes, I thought that 'case' in 'case by case' related to the service, not the individuals using the service - so if you are assessing whether you are providing a service where e.g.

(6)The condition is that—
(a)the service is provided for, or is likely to be used by, two or more persons at the same time, and
(b)the circumstances are such that a person of one sex might reasonably object to the presence of a person of the opposite sex.

You are assessing whether the service should be single sex on a 'case by case basis'.

It makes no senses at all to change the rules every time a different combination of people uses the service.

Phillipson wants to deliberately lose it for the EHRC doesn't she?😡

Right, if female people are no longer synonymous with "women" in law it will just mean it's time to roll up the sleeves and start fighting for recognition of female people outside the word "woman".

Unlike (apparently) trans people, we don't stop existing in reality just because we are not allowed to be named in law. And that means we can always make our case to have that reality recognised within society, if not as "women" because "women" includes transwomen, then as something different to "women" because "women" includes transwomen.

If they win, they lose. They can change words and laws but not reality. We have reality so if we lose words we can always regroup under new words. They have nothing but words so whther they lose words, or win words but or lose us from them, they lose everything.

There's a trans on Reddit called Protect-the dollz (🙄) who is legally trained and tends to speak sense when they're all going "Rah rah rah!! The GLP will save us all!! The GLP will overturn the SC judgement!!" etc etc and generally misunderstanding the law. Here's what he had to say after theh first day of the Judicial Review:

Protect-the-dollz

Fair play to GLP for raising this quickly and keeping it going through the guidance withdrawal fiasco.
I wasn't impressed by what I read yesterday and don't know what to expect today, but credit where it's due.

ehllohehll

I wasn't impressed by what I read yesterday
In what way?

Protect-the-dollz

Shit like trying to rely on Crofts or assert the the '92 regulations permit employers to adopt a different definition of man amd woman to FWS. That was never going to fly.
Not being able to explain how the EA, as understood by the EHRC, breaches the HRA section by section and having to be given overnight to go away and think of an answer.
Now the EHRC had some bad moments today themselves- disagreeing with the judge re disavantages.
And our guy re stated his case with a different, much stronger approach, but he shouldn't have needed a second try (although he still had the judge niggling and disagreeing with him right up near the end).
And while it sounded much better, it's still fundamentally the same Crofts based argument about comparators and that has no basis in statute or caselaw beyond Crofts (and we know what this judge thinks of crofts) so will be demolished in written subs.
Hopefully the HR arguments are stronger.
I was angry yesterday, I am just sad tonight. There is a big argument under another of my comments where 3 people are all getting the law wrong in different ways, and I cba arguing with any of them.
Which isn't like me at all.
I was quietly hopeful the judge would be receptive to the Govs intervention, because that is a good weather vane in our favour on a clever and technical point which we could have got by on until an ehrc case saved us.
He completely demolished them.
3

There's a lot more, about Tribunal Tweets versus Ashleeee, it's worth reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1ow6qll/comment/nooxacp/

Case by case is regarding the justification for a single sex space or not. Not whether individuals can destroy such a space.

I wonder if they are thinking of risk assessing each individual person as to how damaging they are in the bathroom. Like a cossh form. I assume it’s workplaces that they are thinking of. I would like to see the risks listed and the mitigating factors they put in place to reduce harm.

It only makes even the vaguest of sense if it means case by case of service, for example women can have rape crisis men-free services but not loos.

The answer to that if it's Phillipson's plan, is if that men are sometimes women and sometimes not the law is bonkers, and the plan behind it is that men will just regain the lost ground on that precedent that if they're a woman in a loo they're a woman in a strip search opportunity/rape crisis service etc etc etc. It's a fast way straight back to the mess that caused the SCJ.

And also to ask of Phillipson, ok, so what do we do with the women who can't use those loos because you've let men into them?

Why the huge panic and sads that men might be excluded but not for the women excluded? She needs to face openly that this is fixing male primacy of access, consideration and privilege above women's on a biological binary basis, in law . That it is ok for women to suffer but not men. That women must have less so that men can have more.

And then explain to women why they should go on paying the same tax as men.

There's this idea out there in the ether that I might in the not-too-distant future vote Labour again, then I read a thread like this, and it zooms off into the distance again. You just can't trust them, can you? No senior Labour figure is prepared to stand up to gender ideology, they all (still!) seem shit-scared. Could you imagine any Minister, for example, saying they don't believe that gender is anything other than a personal belief for some people, or that they do not accept the concept of the 'trans child'?

So much for the Labour government welcoming the clarity that the SC judgement brought.

Will the outcome of the Maria Kelly v Leonardo UK tribunal have any bearing on this, as the claim in that case relates to the detriment caused to women by not having single sex toilet facilities?

A lawyer who is on the GLP team for this case, attempting to stop the transes misunderstanding the law/what has been said:

Jess O'Thomson
‪@jessothomson.co.uk‬

Seeing a lot of people I frankly thought better of misunderstanding this. It means case by case re. the service provider not the individuals using the service. This is how the Equality Act has worked for years - with providers having to justify exclusion as proportionate.

https://bsky.app/profile/jessothomson.co.uk/post/3m5lh3yrghs2e

So it's a female only space, which they allow certain trans identified men in (criteria to be decided, based on fuck all).

Why wouldn't non trans identified men be able to claim sex discrimination?

‪Jess O'Thomson‬
‪@jessothomson.co.uk‬

This is just how the Equality Act is structured re. all sorts of things (including, eg , provision for disabled people as well). You can obviously have criticisms of how that Act is structured but in terms of explaining how it currently works, I don't think the Minister's position is bad.

https://bsky.app/profile/jessothomson.co.uk/post/3m5lh7ezyok2e

I've just tried to view the post on Bluesky from Jess O'Thompson but I can't see it because it says the user has blocked me 🤔 I have a Bluesky account but don't really use it. I never post anything.

The Judges on the SC panel have been through all of this in great detail already.
" Case by Case " has been ruled out as non compliant and unenforceable.

Why must we have to go through all of this again...just because some people have not done their homework and didn't bother to read and understand the ruling in the first place?

What is needed is someone to explain the ruling to the numpties in court.

Well obviously it has to be case by case by service.

If it's case by case by individual - Peter Tatchell has been arguing that case for years, on the basis that it's oppressive to exclude a whole group, and to be fair to PT he's been relatively honest about the implications of that, which is you can retrospectively exclude someone after they've misbehaved. Which doesn't help any victims of their misbehaviour.

Rule 1 of safeguarding is don't listen to Peter Tatchell, but he's still more clued up than trans reddit.

The answer to that if it's Phillipson's plan, is if that men are sometimes women and sometimes not the law is bonkers,

The people who think this "sometimes but not always" fudge is reasonable are demonstrating the foundational deceit of Genderism, which is that it pretends that it cannot define or recognise what a woman is while requiring everyone still knows in reality what they mean by "woman" because without that trans women have nothing to define themselves in relation to.

I think there's a colourable case for that, though it's not clear that GLP actually made it.

Schedule 3 = service open to all and not policed.

WR1992 (and also eg schools and prisons which have their own regulations) = situation where employer etc has control and oversight over who uses the facilities including specific trans individuals.

I'm not saying it's a good case, but it is a difference.

I don't understand the rationale behind case by case by service. Women can have single sex rape crisis centres, but they think that these same women will not need single sex facilities as they go about their daily lives?

It might be because of who you follow. BlueSky has more ability to block I think.

It's an interesting line, but the men with trans identities wanting into women's space are not doing so for safety but for mental distress at the thought of entering a space that does not for them feel dignified, which inhibits their privacy, harms their feelings and comfort.

I don't see how you can argue this without equally arguing it is exactly the same and worse for women who cannot use mixed sex spaces.

It doesn't matter whether a man is proven to be a reincarnated angel through a Layla Moral soul check: as he walks in, however lovely he is, some women have to walk out.

Either exclusion matters, or it doesn't. Either feelings matter or they don't.

This is about trying to create a binary hierarchy where these things matter for men but not for women, and the mad thing is that its entirely on a biologically sexed basis.

I suppose if this hell on toast rewriting of the SCJ happens and places are allowed to choose wtf they mean by 'single sex' it's back to court for discrimination against women.

And a few more years and crowdfunding. And more clarification that the government can then earnestly fuck up and witter about while doing nothing.

I wonder if Bridget Phillipson is trying to have her cake and eat it, here. She can go "But look! We tried!" about her suggested case-by-case solution, knowing full well that it would fail legally.

I think you are right Gnome.

Yes, ultimately the counter-argument involves sex-discrimination (women more disadvantaged than men by mixed-sex services), but the route to that is tortuous.

Actions carried out in pursuit of 'an enactment' (which would include WR1992) are exempt from the EA so the question is whether WR1992 is truly met.

WR1992 doesn’t have to assume TWAW, only that it allows men to use women's facilities at work in exceptional circumstances eg those contemplated by Croft (Croft was legally male and still would be once 'transitioned enough', because GRC not yet invented). Croft hasn't been overturned, as such.

SC ruling tells us the EA can only be interpreted in a way that overturns the spirit of Croft, but not why. Wrongly drafted and in need of amendment?

I think the whole premise of the GRA will need tackling, sooner or later.