Good Law Project v the EHRC in court today

[Another2Cats]

Tribunal Tweets are not live tweeting this but will be updating during breaks.

There does appear to be one person live tweeting though and I found her latest tweet interesting:

"The EHRC says the new ETA for the draft Code of Practice is the end of December and suggests that the wordings in the Interim Update will not be included in the draft Code."

https://bsky.app/profile/reactiveashley.bsky.social/post/3lv6he5d5422b

I'm sure that there will be a lot more coming out when TT start reporting

Not a problem when you are a barrister using these cases to earn a living - you can still get paid for the work you did in preparation.

It always seems to me that trans identified men out themselves as trans when they invade the female toilets. If they used the men’s people would just assume they are gender non-conforming and that would never do.

I enjoyed this snippet of what the session might have been like. This is at the end; the judge has spent much of the time wading through the GLP submissions.
J = judge
JC = barrister, KC, for EHRC
AG = barrister, KC, for GLP

[The judge starts off by suggesting dates for the hearing]...

JC – has conflict
J – how about 10 Nov,
AG – is it possible to bring forward
J – the first date I could offer is self-explanatory
AG – but perhaps in October
J – I know what forward means, not possible

From their claim:

By this claim the Claimants ask the Court to quash the relevant aspects of the Guidance and/or make a declaration that it is unlawful on grounds that:

• a. It is an unlawful statement of policy or guidance, providing an inaccurate and misleading statement of the law, in which the Commission encourages and approves unlawful conduct by those to whom the Guidance is directed (Ground 1);
• b. 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 2);
• c. In the alternative to Ground 1, if the Guidance reflects an accurate statement of the law (and the law cannot be read compatibly), the statutory regime is incompatible with trans people’s rights under article 8 and/or 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“the ECHR”), and the Claimants will ask the Court to make a declaration of incompatibility pursuant to section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA1998”) (Ground 3). The Ministers served as interested parties ensure compliance with section 5 HRA 199

But this obscures the primary question: what is the status of the interim update? Keep in mind that there are two notions an interim update and interim guidance. It's my understanding that the interim guidance is statutory, i.e. it's part of law that the EHRC produce it when (among other things) there are new SC rulings that impact the interpretation of the EA, whereas an interim update is informal and non-statutory. The interim guidance has not yet been published, so what's at issue is the interim update (what the GLP is calling interim guidance). Faulkner had this to say about it in her conference with the WEC:

So our interim update was necessarily very brief. We had high demand for some kind of explanation and it was only the headlines that we were highlighting of the Supreme Court judgment. We had a banner right there on the page saying that you must take your own legal advice as organizations, service providers, duty bearers and so on. This is not the definitive word, this is our interpretive reading of it. When you have a synopsis of something it can never spell out all the nuance that an argument or a position might entail.

What the GLP seems to be arguing is that the interim update DOES qualify as interim guidance and therefore MUST be comprehensive and accurate, and that, as it's written, it's not an accurate interpretation of the state of the law with respect to trans bathroom use. So, the first hurdle the GLP needs to clear is to show that the interim update is something that can be legally objected to - a non-obvious claim being that it's not meant to be legal advice and is in fact disclaimed from being advice. If they manage to show that, then they have to show that it's legally defective. If they have shown that the interim update is something that can be objected to, but is not legally defective, then they wish to assert that it's unlawful because it's in conflict with the ECrtHR, in particular articles 8 and 14.

Without knowing the details of the recent proceedings, it's hard to know where their case ran aground. But one can imagine that it might be in trying to mount a legal challenge against something that's little more than a press release. This is actually a recurrent theme with the GLP, they often mount challenges against alleged inaccuracies of findings or reports, but the alleged falsehoods are not actionable. One can speculate that one of the reasons they prefer these types of cases is because it allows them to say that they won their case (proved something was not completely accurate) even though the resulting outcome was simply the status quo.

https://goodlawproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Redacted-2025.06.17-SFG-amended.pdf

😂

Very helpful, thank you.

Do you think money is his motivation though?

Not his main motivation, possibly, but you will note that he always gets the begging bowl out. It's not pro bono work, is it?

Remember the money fundraised by GLP goes mainly to pay for salary for multiple legal staff inside the organisation including Joylon. The key thing is they generally lose the cases. GLP get paid to be legal hobbyists. They don't have to have good cases, it doesn't matter if they win.

In fact by consistently losing they push the envelope against them by demonstrating the law is against them and undermining their arguments in the wider legal profession. The 500,000 GLP raised to fight the SC ruling is going to be wasted on nothing much.

It is the best possible outcome. If that money had been spent on political lobbying for instance it would be far more dangerous. Or worse spent on medical malpractice like Mermaids.

If we wanted to deliberately create an organisation to undermine the trans position inside the UK then you could not do better than creating GLP.

Framing it like they did something substantial and then the begging bowl.

The moment is fast approaching when even the most militant TRA is going to realise they're being rinsed.

That’s not quite right, but I can see why people think that. A rolled up hearing is where they conduct the full hearing, and then permission is decided as well as the substantive judgment (if permission is granted) within the same judgment. It usually happens where it is felt that Court cannot properly judge if the case has sufficient merit to proceed, without hearing the arguments more fully.

The moment is fast approaching when even the most militant TRA is going to realise they're being rinsed.

Surely that would require some acquaintance with reality.

Plus sunk costs fallacy, plus "we're right, we just have to keep going".

It may be a while

• c. In the alternative to Ground 1, if the Guidance reflects an accurate statement of the law (and the law cannot be read compatibly), the statutory regime is incompatible with trans people’s rights under article 8 and/or 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“the ECHR”), and the Claimants will ask the Court to make a declaration of incompatibility pursuant to section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA1998”) (Ground 3). The Ministers served as interested parties ensure compliance with section 5 HRA 199

Is the statutory regime including the workplace Act?
So that a SC ruling ( in theory ) would throw out the Act and force an emergency vote on a new Act?

I think hes motivated by ensuring that there is confusion around sex and gender. And ultimately if a self declared trans person wants to use male or female, they can regardless of their sex.

He has trans identified daughters, there's no way he wants them to be legally treated as men in all cases. But to fund his work, he needs the TW cash, and its these men who want to be in female, never the male spaces.

When it comes to toilet provision, I find myself guided by the three Ps [Ps -see what I did there]:
proportionality, practicality and pragmatism.

I can't see any justification or rationale for widespread provision of special toilet provision for such a tiny proportion of the population - the figures are not clear but approx 0.5%. Women, men and disabled men and women are large groups in society, adding up to 100% of the population, and there are clear and well-established reasons for providing separate facilities for them. In the case of disabled people, it is because of need, not comfort or preference, that they require adapted facilities.

It's not practical for existing public buildings to go to the expense and disruption of installing fourth gender-neutral spaces as well as the women's, men's and disabled spaces already in place.

There is nothing that physically prevents a trans person from using the toilets designated for people of their biological sex. Words like 'discomfort' 'preference' 'wishes' do not describe an inability to use the designated single-sex toilets.
Many transpeople [increasingly, I think?] acknowledge that it's not possible for humans to change sex, so they say they have changed their gender presentation, not their biological sex.
In which case, as single sex toilets are designated by biological sex, not gender, they have no reasonable argument for not using the toilets designated for people of the sex they acknowledge they belong to.

In short, when I read these elaborately-argued demands for universal, additional, elective, special provision [and you can add 'expensive' and 'disruptive' to that list] for 0.5% of the population who would like it but don't actually need it, I just can't see any rationale or justification for it.

I feel I should be speaking that last paragraph to a hushed, expectant courtroom while peering over half-spectacles 😁

The bluesky user claiming end of Dec ETA is unsubstantiated. All other witnesses claim end of August, inline with the interim update estimate after Parliament recess.

They will have to still go through approval etc but it's realistic that the code of practice will be public domain by the time the rolled up hearing happens.. which will be FUN :) :)

0.5% of the population who would like it but don't actually need it, I just can't see any rationale or justification for it

0.5% of the population probably strip completely naked for a poo, and we don't have extra provisions for them. 0.5% of people would prefer a heated or padded toilet seat, or piped musak, or a Japanese bum shower thing, or whatever. That's on them though - pretending someone is the other sex is on everyone else.

To be fair, TRA do talk about the impractical of wide spread gender neutral spaces. Its the solution thats different.

The problem for TRA is that none of their arguments stack up, and rely heavily on a completely sleath person. To offer a solution for those, 99% of trans identifying people would be excluded from any legalisation.

I would like toilets to be clean, sanitary and with adequate toilet paper and hand soap at all times.

But we can't always get even the basics 🤷🏼‍♀️

The arguments based on completely stealth people are very silly really. I've always assumed not much will change for the tiny minority of trans identified people who pass well enough not to be clocked at a glance.

It's true that doesn't accommodate the 99% who, I'm sorry to say this, stick out a mile. Sad times.

The whole "outing" argument Jolyon is so fond of relies on a hall of mirrors assumption that most TiMs are undetectable, so the only way to preserve their privacy is to allow them to self-select into the ladies.

This kind of thing makes me wonder if Jolyon has ever met any trans people, or if he seriously expects the courts to buy the view you often see on the Trans UK subreddit, that cis folx are too stupid to spot when someone is trans.

They see the existence of the vanishingly rare “stealth” passing male as a logic problem no one else can counter.

I am not a lawyer but I see your Article 8 and raise my Article 2.

If you do proper risk assessments and equality and impact assessments, single sex designs with door gaps will always be safer and more hygienic. I know they can be life-saving.

The one exception for the opposite sex to enter (which has rightly been pointed out by EHRC) should be for younger children. They should go into single sex toilets of the sex of the carer they are with. This is because of the real risk where young children have been led into a toilet to be assaulted. This is more likely to happen in a mixed sex, private cubicle/room.

If the argument is that its against Human Rights laws that a trans person should not be outed unless they decide to be, we would have to to tighten up the GRA to have 'passing' as a requirement. Also that a GRC could only be relevant when nobody knew it was issued. If eddie izzard has a GRC and suddenly started to look like a women, we'd still know he's male, therefore he couldnt be outed by going into the male toilet.

If the argument is that trans people should use the opposite sex spaces for their own comfort, then that right would have to be balance with everyone elses right. Including women and any other man who would be more comfortable in the womens spaces.

A GRC or PR of GR could make the law treat someone as the opposite sex, but cannot make the public see someone as their desired sex. And 'outing' and comfort is dependent of the publics perception, not a theory in law.

The human rights aspects rely on women not having any.

It cannot simultaneously be a breach of trans women's human rights to have to use the same toilets as male people, and not a breach of women's human rights to have to use the same toilets as male people.