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

😱because it's such cold day, I've just this very minute changed my socks for warmer ones. They are long and stripey. I'm sweeping the room for hidden cameras😱

So you are saying black is not a PC?

Here you go:

9Race
(1)Race includes—
(a)colour;
(b)nationality;
(c)ethnic or national origins.

Toilets and other services come under Part 3 of the Equality Act and associations are dealt with under Part 7 of the Act.

Basically, associations are not allowed to discriminate against a person by eg refusing to accept them as a member. However, there is a specific carve out in Schedule 16 that allows associations to be restricted to people who share a protected characteristic.

I remember that Akua Reindorf tweeted about this shortly after FWS.

She put it like this:

The exemption in Schedule 16 can only be relied on if all members share the protected characteristic (eg all women or all men etc).

It is possible for an association to combine protected characteristics (“PCs”) as long as it’s for people who all have the same two (or more) PCs: lesbian women, retired men, young Asian disabled people etc. This way, everybody in the club falls within both/all the PCs.

But it cannot be an “either/or” association of two distinct groups: disabled people + older people; Asian women + European men; young people + disabled people etc. This is because the association cannot satisfy the single protected characteristic condition for any one of its PCs.

So it is not permissible to have an association for women + men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (which is what “transgender women” are for the purposes of the EA2010).

This wouldn’t be an association for women because some members are men and it wouldn’t be an association for trans people because some members aren’t trans. In consequence an association like that cannot rely on the Schedule 16 exemption.

https://x.com/akuareindorf/status/1916748422658359573

There is a social etiquette around the use of the mens urinal. So much so that there are multiple utube shorts about which one a man picks if there are others there before him.

Men want privacy too and nobody want to be made feel uncomfortable when they are toileting. Half decent men dont want to flash women even by accident.

I also think its a basic prey instinct as the smell is a marker for predators and mid-process flight puts you wrong footed against everyone else (you only have to be second last to out run the bear😉)

You can become a citizen of another country but I'd argue that does not change your nationality. So you can be English but can also a be Spanish citizen at the same time, for example.

It does literally change your nationality.

Although I admit that I am being pedantic and people do talk about nationality in both a legal sense and as it relates to their feelings about identity.

Yes, but 'race' is not the exact same thing as 'white'.

Look back at the original example that was given about spaces intended only for white people. There would be no legally protected right for a whites only group or facility. But there is when it comes to 'Sex' - because 'Sex' is a protected category.

"A private club or other association cannot restrict membership on the basis of skin colour, but can restrict membership based on ethnic origin. However, although the rules defining who can join must not use colour, a club could have a name that refers to colour"

None of which is actually an objective metric.

I agree. I like decoding the legal tea leaves left in the cup as much as anyone. I was thinking of comments in the press, and elsewhere, along the lines of "this judgement doesn't give us the legal clarity we were hoping for, it's such a disappointment".

We were (or should have been) hoping for clarity on whether the interim guidelines and what they said were legal. That's what we got!

Any UK posters will be well aware that politically there is no settled consensus on nationality in the UK. There may be legally, but that of course can be changed in parliament.

I agree. I like decoding the legal tea leaves left in the cup as much as anyone. I was thinking of comments in the press, and elsewhere, along the lines of "this judgement doesn't give us the legal clarity we were hoping for, it's such a disappointment".

"Not that sort of clarity" 😀

Sorry to nit pick

But if the person is fits within the male classification its legally not biologically female. The BC would contain a factual error.

The GRA created legally female biologically male or legally male biologically female.

In that instance provision/access in what should be a female only single sex space/service would be giving to a male who would not cause alarm or distress etc so in effect its the "other side of the coin" to the "passing" female who can be lawfully excluded.

If the person is female then non-passing rules could apply.

I said very clearly that 'white' is not a protected characteristic.

Being white is a protected characteristic. The reason you can't have a whites-only club is that skin colour is an exception to the exemption set out in Schedule 16.

'White' and 'black' both are covered by 'race'......but you still cannot have a category or service etc which excludes people based purely on their skin colour. So it is not legal to say 'whites only' or 'blacks only'. That would be racial discrimination.

We have established a group cannot be formed around being black or white under schedule 16. However, white is quite clearly a colour so covered by the PC of race.

You presumably could form an association around indigenous European ethnicity though.

'The wrong kind of clarity'😄
As I said before, I think the judge was clear when judging, but less so when opining, e.g. the possibility that maybe a case could be made that in some circumstances a transwoman possibly might be allowed to use the women's was heard as
'It's official- a judge has said we can all use the Ladies! those bigots can't keep us out now!'😠

It is not protected in the sense that you can't have a whites only service or membership, in the way you can have a women/female only service or category.

You. cannot have a black only membership either; whilst you can have a membership which is predicated on ethnicity or religion.

But you think black is? Why?

White is to race as gender critical is to belief and female is to sex and 9 years old is to age.

They are categories of race/belief/sex/age/

You cannot discriminate against someone just because they are black, or against someone just because they are white. But you can't form a group that is for whites or blacks only, in the way you can form a service that is for women only.

Because the regulations are slightly different for race and the instances where discrimination is allowed are much more narrow.

The primary point of a PC is to prevent discrimination.

Hummm....
If its not against public policy you could word it as variation of "native english" as one London LA did when asking for community participation by copy and pasting a US wording.
🙈😂