Good Law Project's latest claim - fact check?

[teawamutu]

I'm sure there must be some arrant bollocks in here somewhere, because Jolyon.

But is there anything worrying in this?

goodlawproject.org/ehrc-backs-down-on-single-sex-toilets/

I wonder if this is being twisted by them.

Because what have EHRC said about the EA vs the employment legalisation? I believe it is a different act that said employers of a particular size must provide female toilets. I would need to go and check though.

By the way, here is an archive link to the Good Law Project page above.

https://archive.ph/LmR53

They are still collecting money though.

Free copy of Jolyon's book for a monthly donation 😬

Didn't he step back a while ago, or something? 🤔

Isn’t that what they said all along? How is this “backing down”? Organisations have always been able to provide unisex single occupancy toilets. Disingenuous spin.

This. Along wih the advice that if an organisation turns single sex toilets that don't meet the "unisex single occupancy" rules, then employees might have a case for sex discrimination?

The obsession these men have about sharing toilets with unconsenting women is so bloody tedious. Still - it just highlights what their fetishes really are so grateful for expose I suppose.

Agree. That sounds like a bog standard interpretation of the equality act, and the welfare at work regs, which anyone not completely stonewalled would have understood to have been the case for decades.

Document T. It’s all there and was finalised in 2024.

No need to worry.

Here's EHRC's response. They haven't 'backed down', they've just explained it to him.

goodlawproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025.06.13-REDACTED-Response-to-Letter-of-Claim-1.pdf

I'll wait and see for Akua Reindorf's response on Twitter, it's usually a lot more sane.

I'm just dropping this tangentially related link here in case it's of any interest - court's reason for not allowing an injunction for protest at EHRC offices:

https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/litigation-and-enforcement/400-litigation-news/61267-high-court-gives-reasons-for-rejecting-injunction-bid-over-trans-rights-protest-outside-equality-watchdog-offices

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/KB/2025/1438.html

'He says that the protestors appear to be under the age of 18, although a couple of adults were present. '
...
' A further trespass would cause disruption to the access to Tintagel House (including the obstruction of the wheelchair/disabled access ramp), and disruption to the business of the Claimants' licensees including the EHRC, the majority of whose staff were not attending the Premises by reason of the recent protest; further protest would damage the brand perception of the Claimants: passers-by might view the protest as being against Tintagel House itself and not one of its many licensees'

They'd also blocked a fire escape.

The KC for the terribly marginalised children said: 'there was no evidence that disabled persons were inconvenienced by the blocking of the ramp'.

Eventual finding:

'whilst there may be a possibility that a trespassory protest will take place at Tintagel House at some further point before the expiry of the EHRC's licence, the evidence is far removed from establishing a strong probability that the protest will recur, let alone that it will recur imminently'

'Note 1 I allowed Good Law Project to intervene in this case. Good Law Project is a not-for-profit campaigning organisation which has been involved in various legal proceedings. I considered that they had a sufficient interest in the issues arising given that they are a non-profit organisation which has campaigned and litigated in the trans-rights space and for the rights of protesters. Further, this was a case in which the Defendants would not be represented and I considered that it would be of real assistance to the Court to hear the types of arguments that the Defendants would have made had they been present. This would meet the procedural fairness requirements for Persons Unknown'

Here is what Sex Matters published on 7th May

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/workplace-toilets-know-your-rights/

Under the 1992 Workplace Regulations, most workplaces must provide single-sex toilets for their employees, as well as changing rooms and washing facilities where required. While toilets can be single-user fully enclosed rooms, the most common approach in larger workplaces is two or more cubicles inside an enclosed room, with handwashing facilities in a shared area, all behind a door marked either Male or Female. There will often be a unisex single-user accessible toilet as well.

and on their fact sheet it says this:

https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Workplace-toilets-factsheet.pdf

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 provides detailed regulations on this for employers in Great Britain. Regulation 20 requires that:
places

“Suitable and sufficient sanitary conveniences shall be provided at readily accessible places"

and that

“Separate rooms containing conveniences are provided for men and women except where and so far as each convenience is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside.”

Regulation 21 requires washing facilities to be separate in a corresponding way, except when the washing is only of hands, forearms and face.

The Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) produced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on workplace health and safety sets out further guidance. It says that "adequate" means that you have to provide enough toilets and washbasins for those expected to use them and:

“Where possible, separate facilities for men and women, failing that, rooms with lockable doors. ”

I don't see where there is any back tracking to be honest. Unless they asked specifically about a different Act to the Workplace Act. There seems to be something of a disconnect here.

I for one am glad that the Good Law Project is taking this one on, because they lose almost all their cases.

Building regs, equality legislation, health and safety regs - they all start off by saying that separate men's and women's toilets are required.

Unisex 'universal' toilets [that's a specific thing, it's not a re-badged single sex toilet, it has to have handwashing facilities inside the cubicle which has to have floor to ceiling doors] MAY be provided, but they are optional.

IF there is no room in a building for separate single sex toilets, unisex 'universal' toilets may be provided instead.

So where they say
The EHRC’s interim update stated (and still states) that: “In workplaces, it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets….” But its pre-action response to Good Law Project concedes that what it meant to say was that “where separate facilities are lawfully provided for ‘men’ and ‘women’, this means for biological men and women [our emphasis]” and that where a toilet “is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside” the employer will satisfy its obligations.

they are just creating confusion out of clarity when they say 'where a toilet “is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside” the employer will satisfy its obligations'

Building regs are as clear as a Supreme Court ruling on the subject of toilet provision:

T1. (1) Toilet accommodation in buildings other than dwellings—
(a) must consist of—
(i) (ii) reasonable provision for male and female single-sex toilets, or where space precludes provision of single-sex toilets, universal toilets, and
(b) may consist of universal toilets in addition to single-sex toilets.
Toilet accommodation: Approved Document T

The GLP left out the 'where space precludes' bit - the No. 1 requirement is sex segregated toilets, unisex toilets are only OK as an alternative if there is limited space in a building, or as an optional extra,

New buildings require single sex toilets and old buildings tend to have them anyway, so separate women's and men's toilets remain the standard configuration.

Such a grift. 'Oh look we used all your donations to ... write a letter to EHRC causing them to ... re-explain the things they already said because we were too dense to understand them the first time.'

That's one expensive letter. As you say MissScarlet I suppose it's better than them giving their money to someone effective. I don't know who could be effective though given the law is now completely clear and simply doesn't say what they want it to.

If a toilet is a single occuplancy unit with integral basin and fully lockable door, this will suffice. Anyone may use that facility. This has always been the case.
But what a company may not do is have a block of toilets with shared access and shared basins and declare that anyone may use it.

Larger companies and businesses who employ many people may well decide it is preferable to have single sex blocks, rather than multiple single ocupancy units for reasons of cost and practicality.

Jolyon has simply got someone. to explain the act to him.

But in this instance a unisex toilet is not a shared communal block, but a single occupancy facility with integral basin.

"Good Law Project will argue before the High Court that even the EHRC’s modified position remains wrong – if an employer chooses to provide separate facilities for men and women it does not need to provide them on the basis of sex assigned at birth"

This is illiterate nonsense.

If an employer already has, or decides to introduce, single sex facilities of the communal kind, they do need to be predicated on biological sex.

Does anyone remember a thread where an employee of a Government/Council type workplace came in one day to find ALL the toilets had been changed to unisex, albeit with lockable doors and sinks in each cubicle? I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that it was legal to do this.

Is it? Going by what has been said already on this thread, I thought the single sex provisions should stay the same, and only if there is no space for male and female separate facilities, that then unisex could be introduced.

I'm getting a bit confused now, so it's easy to see how GLP are aiming to befuddle everything.

Most organisations will meet the requirements in the most cost effective and practicable way. Organisations which have done as you suggest, and at great expense, have done so purely out of a muisguided/misrepresented sense of the law and a desire to signal virtue.

The sort of scenario you describe could maybe work in a small company......but in a large company with many employers; a large entertainment venue; or in the night time economy it may well prove more problematic; and could still open up an employer to accusations around lack of privacy and respect for Sex based protections, and could also endanger female users by them having to use shared access corridors with men.

As there isn't anything on the EHRC web site I think you should just accept that it is spin.

Probably best not to give them any publicity by creating a thread about them on FWR.

Just feeds their ego if they think we are worried by them!

'Unisex' in that instance is a single occupancy unit with integral basin, such as you find in small coffee shops etc...not a shared block with communal access.

Was Jolyon any good as a tax specialist 'cos he's shit as a trans(woman) specialist.

To be fair, I did say at the beginning that I thought it was bollocks.

Now that MN has explained why, it's quite a useful resource. I wouldn't be pointing any GLP potential marks donors towards it if I were Jolly.

IANAL but i have a law degree.

I thought it might be helpful to encapsulate the response to the Goody law projects letter before action.

The EHRC solicitors response in a nutshell was as follows.

FUCKING TWATS, JUST CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONSULTATION, YOU HAVE NO HELLS CHANCE OF A SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION FOR A JUDICIARY REVIEW BECAUSE YOU ARE TWATS (without any legally sound arguments)

hope that helps.

Usually the GLP presents its 'victories' in a way that is at least technically not incorrect. So, the question is how is: what are the technicalities that make their latest post not a lie?

SENTENCE 1

"The EHRC’s interim update stated (and still states) that: 'In workplaces, it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets….' "

This is a true statement.

SENTENCE 2

But its pre-action response to Good Law Project concedes that what it meant to say was that “where separate facilities are lawfully provided for ‘men’ and ‘women’, this means for biological men and women [our emphasis]” and that where a toilet “is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside” the employer will satisfy its obligations."

• The word 'concedes' implies that the EHRC admitted some guilt or failing; they did not. But the coloration of the meaning is broad enough that it can be used as a synonym for 'states'. If that meaning is used the statement is true.
• 'Meant' is used here to imply that the EHRC made a mistake. But it's also compatible with the assertion: ... that what it meant to say and in fact did say was that ...

Given the above you can argue that the statement is not technically false.

SENTENCE 3

"Good Law Project will argue before the High Court that even the EHRC’s modified position remains wrong – if an employer chooses to provide separate facilities for men and women it does not need to provide them on the basis of sex assigned at birth."

Here the GLP is making a statement of future intent that begs the question that the EHRC has 'modified their position'. So, even though it's one of the cheapest fallacies in the book, technically it's not a false assertion.

Even for the GLP this seems to be a pretty shameful display of mendacity, but I suppose it's always difficult to remove one's own personal sentiments about the parties and the case from such evaluations.