Judge McCloud seeks re-hearing of the Supreme Court FWS appeal

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/18/transgender-judge-supreme-court-case-biological-sex

'The UK’s first transgender judge has launched a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.
The retired judge Victoria McCloud, who is now a litigation strategist at W-Legal, is seeking a rehearing of the case, arguing that the supreme court undermined her article 6 rights to a fair trial when it refused to hear representation from her and did not hear evidence from any other trans individuals or groups.'

The Amnesty representative was, I believe, non-binary?

I don’t think you’re correct in your basic analysis.

the interpretation of things like “the right to a family life” has clearly changed beyond how anyone thought of it in the 1950’s, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. So “making shit up”, a.k.a. (re)interpreting Convention rights as they should apply in modern society) is part of the role of the ECtHR.

They clearly do make shit up and governments go along with it, so it’s a moot point either way.

As for whether the high court can overrule the Supreme Court: a declaration of incompatibility isn’t strictly overruling the SC: the SC decision remains the accurate and correct interpretation of the law as it stands but the HC can declare that the law itself to have been drafted incompatibly with the EConHR, and therefore needs to be generously reinterpreted to be so or else Parliament “must” change it. Of course Parliament doesn’t have to do anything, because there no mechanism for an ECtHR decision to be enforced.

I am not aware of any ECHR jurisprudence dealing specifically with single sex spaces or what happens when there is a conflict between trans women's needs and women's needs

I think you are right that this hasn't been tested before the ECHR before. And if it they rule that gender recognition is not an absolute right, but a qualified right, because there is a conflict with the rights of women, then could this potentially be an own goal for TRAs? Because presumably this would have implications for other members states where the rights of trans-identifying males have been elevated above those of women (I'm thinking of countries that have adopted self ID).

I will bet on two things

In Wales, Plaid and Labour will do their best to keep quiet about the whole gender ideology thing. This will only work if their looser cannons don't mouth off, and if Reform doesn't hammer this point.

Also, if asked, Plaid and Labour would say Sturgeon was undone by the allegations of financial misdeeds, not the GI... What's that great Scottish word? Stooshie?

I guess someone was bound to challenge it. Hopefully, the result will make the ruling stronger.

They didn’t ask me for my input or opinion either.

The answer to this is actually clear cut.

IF gender recognition is a human right at all (my own view is that it is not, that the Goodwin case was bad law and an example of political meddling by the ECHR), it is not a standalone human right. It is considered to form part of the right to a private and family life, which is a qualified right.

People have quite often tried and failed to invoke this right, often in an immigration context. The UK has not been declared non-compliant with the ECHR because it does not automatically grant visas to the partners and families of British citizens, for example. The logic is that a person's right to bring their spouse or family members to live with them in the UK must be balanced against the need to protect the UK population as a whole by having a robust immigration system.

So the "right" to gender recognition could never be considered absolute and should in theory be balanced against the rights of any other people who could be affected by it.

Goodwin really was a terrible piece of jurisprudence. The facts of the case concerned the right to marry. A trans person claimed that their right to a private and family life was being infringed because they were not allowed to marry their (same sex, opposite gender identity) partner. And instead of saying, "the right to a private and family life should include the right to marry any single and consenting adult, regardless of sex or gender identity" the batshit judges decided that the right to a private and family life should include the right to change your legal sex so that you could become the opposite sex to your partner and therefore marry them.

As a result, trans people with a gender recognition certificate got the right to marry their same sex partners over a decade before ordinary gay men and lesbians did. (OK, the Civil Partnership Act was passed at around the same time, which gave all the same rights as marriage, but arguably not the same social status.)

Remember this, any time someone tries to tell you that trans people were front and centre of the fight for gay rights, and that a trans woman threw the first brick at the Stonewall riots. There must be no LGB without the T, but there's been plenty of T without the LGB. I do not recall any trans people standing up after Goodwin and saying, "Hey! What about the rest of the LGBT community?"

Edit: Will my phone fucking stop autocorrecting LGB to LGBT, thus proving my fucking point?

@fromorbit Will any major party in the UK go to a big election saying they want to bring in gender self ID into the Uk? After what has happened?
Will the SNP run on that platform in May 2026? Will Scottish and Welsh Labour?

I can't speak for Scotland but I wouldn't put anything past Welsh Labour, LibDems and Plaid Cymru. The really unknown factor is Wales is how well Reform will do and to what extent the threat of its success will affect what those three parties put in their manifestos. At the moment polling shows Plaid and Reform vying for top place with Labour a poor third. The other factor in next year's election is the enlargement of the Senedd by a third and a new proportional voting system. I don't envy the pollsters.

https://nation.cymru/news/reform-leads-over-plaid-again-in-latest-senedd-poll/

The thing is, re the ECHR, ex-judge Victoria himself pointed out that the UK parliament is sovereign, and that the ECHR can't actually make it do anything it doesn't want to:

Just noticed his "But cases imposes political pressure, that's faster" comment. Well, unluckily for him and his ilk, the TERFs have more cases in the pipeline than they do.

Slightly o/t
but the ECHR will have to bear in mind that Germany's sneaky
self ID law with massive fines for deadnaming has rather blown up
and awareness of self ID is on the front pages of papers all over the world

I cannot see the German law (or the Spanish one) lasting long
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3r4zrg35vlo

Good points . Yes I agree Wales is a bit of unknown area. Yet I still think it is correct to say I don't think Welsh Labour will be OPENLY campaigning on this stuff. Plus I think Starmer will kick off if Welsh Labour try to hedge. Of course they could try to continue to wreck stuff secretly.

I think both Welsh Labour and Plaid will try and duck the issue. However with Laura Anne Jones being the only Reform MS right now and her record on talking about this issue a lot that is going to be more difficult than before.

There is also the problem pesky women keep popping up and asking questions. I think there is going to be even more of that next year Plaid and Welsh Labour have benefitted from everyone ignoring Wales. In 2026 elections that won't be the case.If either party want to say still are confused on what a women is. If they want to fight Reform on that basis that will be their call.

Check out the recent thread on Plaid for Welsh women causing trouble.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5393375-when-plaid-cymru-met-womens-rights

It is naivety beyond belief to not have considered that men like this will take advantage of self ID legislation.

Remind me again how many prisoners have voted since the ECtHR ruling ?

Interesting bit of ventriloquism here... after a full article of "she" and "her", the BBC quotes a journalist whose point calls out of the BBC's spinelessness

Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Nius, posted on X in July: "Anyone who follows the reporting on neo-Nazi Sven Liebich can only come to one conclusion: The traffic-light coalition government has managed, by law, to force almost the entire German media landscape to tell untruths and make grotesquely false claims. Sven Liebich is not a woman."

No-one's really forcing the BBC to call people like Liebich "she"... and meanwhile, SEEN in Journalism has said firmly: "Last chance to do the right thing on self-ID" https://substack.com/home/post/p-170575973

And we win our cases whilst they lose them

Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Nius, posted on X in July: "Anyone who follows the reporting on neo-Nazi Sven Liebich can only come to one conclusion: The traffic-light coalition government has managed, by law, to force almost the entire German media landscape to tell untruths and make grotesquely false claims. Sven Liebich is not a woman."

I think considering the history of German media untruths ....

This point might make sense if it weren't for the voices of prominent trans campaigners like Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle advocating for marriage equality, and the inclusion of organisations like Outrage and the Scottish Trans Alliance in the Coalition for Marriage Equality.

They ain't that prominent, mate.

Certainly not as prominent as the fragrant India Willoughby and violent criminal Sarah Jane Baker.

Changing goalposts now.

Your claim: "I do not recall any trans people standing up after Goodwin and saying, "Hey! What about the rest of the LGBT community?"

Not 'I do not recall any trans people who I falsely determine as the benchmark of prominence standing up...'

Incidentally, you are spouting nonsense if you think India Willoughby and Sarah Jane Baker were more prominent trans people than Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle in the period between 2004 and 2013.

Whittle can marry her wife any day.
The picture of her with Robin and Windia showed how teeny tiny she is.

Christine Burns - WHO ?
What has he done in the last 15 years

GRA 2004 is a sex and class discriminatory bill - the end

I'm not sure what you think that has to do with my post. Which was simply pointing out that another poster's claim that trans people - later shifted to 'prominent' trans people, by some weird and false measure - having secured the right to marry souses of the opposite legal sex through Goodwin/GRA, did not then call for lesbian and gay men to be able to marry their same sex partners.

That claim was a lie.

Stephen Whittle's height is irrelevant to the fact that it was a lie. As is the fact that you don't know who Christine Burns is.

But she didn't say that. She said she did not recall any. And neither do I

Yes I’m sure that lots of users of this board were closely following the path to marriage equality between 2004 and 2013.

If someone is going to make an argument based on a false recollection they should at least have the humility to acknowledge that.

Weak reply

It's possible that trans voices for marriage equality have been forgotten. I for one can't recall a single instance of Whittle or Burns advocated for marriage equality (or 'gay marriage'), and Google is unable to refresh my memory. Quite the contrary, it's reminded me how single-issue trans activists were for their own issue during the period. Perhaps, rather than expecting us accept your assertion at face value, you could provide some evidence of this active campaigning?

Perhaps Whittle and Burns may bravely have had a quiet cup of tea with someone in the corridors of power and raised marriage equality, somewhere after self-id and removing references to women and motherhood from maternity policies. Standing up and publicly campaigning for any of that would have been terribly outing for them, so they didn’t. Hence no one can corroborate.

Which is handy.