GLP v EHRC judgement is coming tomorrow

[DownhillTeaTray]

Listing in the Administrative Court for tomorrow not before 11am: read out of the judgment in our challenge to the EHRC Interim Guidance.

https://bsky.app/profile/goodlawproject.org/post/3meo6ow7ow22k

😀

Agreed. But law is written for rational people. It may be gradually dawning in some circles that you can't reason or negotiate with irrationality, you can only provide strong boundaries and stick to them.

A few weeks on the relationships board may help, women there really get the idea of boundaries in situations like this.

Akua Reindorf to Carla Denyer 🔥

Is that not applying to the last time JK tried to have standing, not this time?

that may be AI hasn't caught up yet I mean

Isn't "reasonable" the touchstone of interpretation of all law ?

The person on the Clapham Omnibus ?

Almost entirely, but not quite.

Right at the very end of the judgment the judge dealt with the article 8 rights of non-trans-identifying (ie normal) people, albeit very briefly.

At para [100] he said that even if not having a trans-inclusive toilet was capable of being an interference with a trans-identifying man's article 8 rights, then not having such a toilet can still be justified by taking into account the article 8 rights of women.

[100] ... Even if there is a relevant prohibition on provision by a service provider or an employer of a trans-inclusive lavatory, and a consequent interference with article 8 rights, that interference would be capable of being justified taking into account the rights and freedoms of others. Justification would depend on the facts of any particular situation. Nevertheless, the fact that justification is possible and on many scenarios highly likely to be present, is sufficient to dispose of this ground of challenge.
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Apart from that, the judge simply said that the EHCR were correct to say that the absence of single-sex female toilets could amount to indirect sex discrimination. He went on to say:

[52] ...The success or failure of such a claim would be fact-dependent, for example on how the matters referred to at section 19(1)(b) (disadvantage), and (d) (proportionality) fell to be assessed. To this extent the point made was accurately made.
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And, of course, he also very clearly agreed with the EHCR statement that:

"(v) Single-sex lavatories provided will cease to be single-sex if transsexual persons are permitted to use them other than in accordance with their biological sex"

He said:

[53] Point (v) is also accurate; it is an inevitable consequence of the conclusion of the Supreme Court in For Women Scotland that in the EA 2010 “man” means a biological man and “woman” means a biological woman

My assumption would be IBS and the person concerned was a bit embarrassed about it.

‘Trans’ wouldn’t be on the list unless I already thought they were trans.

Schrödinger's Women's Toilet?

It says 'WOMEN' on the door but you don't know if it is for women or not until you open the door and see if there is a man inside...

It's beautifully written and I like the concept of the comparator for gender reassignment purposes being gender-neutral "other people" which allows a holistic analysis.

So the guidance was legal and correct, at least one claimant had standing, but case dismissed because FWS not intrinsically contrary to Goodwin or Article 8. No trans-inclusive toilet =/= no toilet at all.

Also, WR1992 can't be completely disentangled from EA2010 because of Schedule 22: employers must provide single-sex facilities and must not leave trans people without facilities (this will surely have a knock-on effect on other legislation eg about prisons and schools).

The only fly in the ointment is that, applying the same scrupulous approach he uses to reject the human rights claims, he keeps open the possibility (notwithstanding Coll and the Darlington case) that a trans-inclusive women's facility will not intrinsically discriminate against men or women, respectively, because it is fact-dependent. This is what JM has glommed onto and could see a continued fight to prove that providing certain facilities only in mixed-sex form is discrimination against women and people with protected beliefs, both religious and GC, that effectively exclude them from mixed-sex spaces.

Of course, service providers can vote with their feet, but only if they know.

Will the Orthodox Jewish women of Hampstead have to wait another nine years before they can go back to the Ponds?

Only if the fitness to practise issue comes to the GMC's attention before the doctor voluntarily surrenders registration. Then the GMC can refuse to allow voluntary surrender pending a fitness to practise case. At least this was the situation at the time of the Bawa-Garba case, and the consultant concerned had swanned off to Ireland by the time the case was heard by the GMC so was no longer subject to GMC jurisdiction.

AMI, when I voluntarily surrendered registration I needed a letter from my medical director saying that there were no "concerns" outstanding.

I am entitled to use diasbled loos but no-one would be able to tell why as my life threatening condition is completely invisible, so I don't tend to speculate why anyone else would be using them. I don't usually use them but wouldn't take kindly to any speculating on the occasions I have to. Unless it's an obvious man pretending to be a woman and right in my face I wouldn't take any notice, apart from to be thankful he's not in the Ladies.

It's odd tho, the delightful man in the Darlington nurses changing room said that he'd never made being trans a secret , which to me translates as he wasn't trying to hide that he's a bloke. Not to him tho I suspect

I agree that guidance needs to be clear. But I think usually when people think it isn't clear, it's because it doesn't say what they want. Not just in this context but any time.

Sometimes it may not address an exact situation but I think most scenarios are covered by the EHRC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lrd0ey074o

so we are the same situation as under the 2011 Stonewall/EHRC guideance with men able to enter womens spaces if they declare ladyfeels.

Whats actually changed?

(this makes me feel so stupid & GUIDANCE should CLARIFY the law not add to confusion)

I'm embarrassed to be so confused but:

I thought the ehrc guidance Bridget Phillipson is sitting on was for service providers? And didn't apply to employers?

Employers were covered under the health and safety work regulations?

But this today is all about ehcr guidance for employers but not service providers??

If someone can simply and briefly explain I'd be so grateful, I feel like I'm going insane.

Agreed. You need to provide evidence of being in good standing before you can voluntarily surrender registration when the entry on the register states "Not Registered - Having relinquished registration".

If you just stop paying your annual retention fee your name is still listed on the register as "Not Registered - Administrative Reason"

so does the LAW & EHRC Guidance provide for womens single sex spaces or not?

She was registered female at birth and had always lived as a woman. Even if she looks like Imane Khelif, the fact that she had been using the women's toilet for years on the understanding, known to many colleagues, that her appearance was due to a DSD, could have weighed against the application of Schedule 3 para 28. And in any case, FWS did not change her legal position - she could always have been asked to use other facilities, as a derogation from the general ban on perceptive discrimination, so it was arbitrary for her manager to suddenly decide to ban her at this particular juncture. JM could have helped her, and instead he used her.

I've been wondering this. There would have to be different labelling of different types of toilets:

Toilets for biological women.
Toilets for women and transwomen.

That would still upset them though.

you aren't alone x

I realise that transwomen are going to leap at this, because it's validation. Even if women have a single sex toilet elsewhere, one labelled women that TW can use and other men can't, is very validating.

It still wouldn't be enough for them and the chances of services providing male only toilets, female only toilets, any sex accessible toilets and special toilets for a tiny percentage of transwomen are vanishingly small.

They've learned the hard way. The earnest, kind types who infest HR and DEI departments haven't had to. I am not quite nasty enough to wish they had to, but I would like to see more representation of male on female violence survivors in these departments.

My underlying suspicion is that the hormones leave us with permanently self-entitled teenagers, so all those who are campaigning for them may well be a bit scared of them and the threats 'I'll kill myself and then you'll be sorry' especially after this week in Canada.

His problem here is that we've been simultaneously told that everyone who declares they are trans is entitled to use opposite sex facilities regardless of their state of transition.

So he's asking for sympathy for (possibly) an elderly transwoman who made a full transition years ago but will then leverage that to allow anyone into any facility simply on their own word.

Well GLP shot themselves in the foot there….

Not least because you're usually the ones loudly telling everyone and demanding other people's rights.