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

Surely Indigenous!

There are various ethnicities within Europe.

Europe is a culturally diverse continent with over 80 distinct ethnic groups, majorly classified into Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, and Finno-Ugric language families. While many nations have majority populations (e.g., Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles), there are also significant minority groups, such as the Romany/Sinti, Basques, and various regional identities.

'White' is not an ethnicity.

@Keeptoiletssafe at this stage I think we need a 》 But toilets 《 thread pinned to the top of the front page.

Thanks for all the hard work🩷👍

Ok, you could set up a group for indigenous English ethnicity.

’Black’ is also not a race or an ethnicity.

You do seem incredibly reluctant to accept that white people have the same protection from discrimination as black people.

(Some of) the Reddit transes are beginning to understand the implications:

Protect-the-dollz
• 8m ago • Edited 2m ago

It's not irrelevant, sorry.I wish it was.
The GLP asked the court to clarify the interaction between the EA, FWS II and the workplace Regulations as d3scibed by the interim guidance.
By answering those questions, and confirming that the ECHR guidance is legally accurate, the judgement has arguably had a greater impact than the guidance passing parliament would have.
The sliver of hope is that the cases which it would otherwise overturn, Kelly and Peggie, are Scottish cases and so not bound.
It is also possible that FWS III will take a different path and we will end up with a divergence between Scots and English law. This does happen from time to time.
however
Normally both jurisdictions respect each others rulings on reserved matters. It is extremely unlikely that peggie or kelly survive appeal.

AshJammy98
OP • 1m ago

It is though. The guidance isn't in effect or statutory now so the law hasn't changed.


marcisaacs
• 7m ago

It's introduced new caselaw regardless of the guidance. It's clarified (sorry) that the Supreme Court ruling (FWS vs Scottish Ministers) does not mandate trans exclusion for service users or associations, it only permits it. Given it's been widely sold as forcing trans exclusion despite what the ruling actually says this is good.
What is massively less good is that there is now binding caselaw that mandates trans exclusion in an employment setting. Or at least, an employer must provide trans-exclusive facilities but may additionally provide trans-inclusive facilities.
The law of the land has in fact changed.

ETA: On this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1r4ke8z/actually_understanding_yesterdays_judgement/

I think you have now finally revealed your actual point. The one you've been hinting at all along, but have yet to be open about.

I have said that both 'white' and 'black' come under the protected category of 'race' - in that you cannot discriminate against someone purely based on their skin colour - but that does not mean that you can have a white only or black only group in the way you can a single sex group. Is that clear?

There is no one European ethnicity. White is not an ethnicity.

You cannot discriminate against anyone ( in the UK) based on their skin colour alone. Whether they be white or black.

Yep i think (99.9999%) that was the word used.👍

Thanks I knew it was not "native" as that reads as saying Primitive

To expand on what I made of the confusing musing [para 61] - what the judge didn't make very clear was that he proposed the scenario in the context of whether letting trans-IDing men into the women's, but excluding all other men, was discriminating against the non-trans men.

He was working through the scenario in terms of the EA:
'is there different treatment? is the treatment less favourable? are the non-trans men treated less favourably if the men's toilet that they are forced to use, unlike their trans brothers, is every bit as nice as the women's? arguably not, so arguably letting the transwomen into the women's is not discriminatory to the other men.'

but unfortunately little ears that couldn't quite comprehend what he was doing thought he was saying 'letting some males into the women's is not discrimination if they are trans-IDing males'

The judge then switched to the viewpoint of the women using the women's toilet, and their standpoint on being discriminated against in their use of what should be a women-only space is different from the men's.

I worked it out eventually, but I wish he had realised that not everybody can tune into that 'asking myself complicated rhetorical questions out loud and in public, in which I appear to be asserting things that I later say are wrong' thing.😒

Paragraph 77 of the judgement - I am not following the judges reasoning here.

Statement 3a of the Interim Guidance says if you let trans identified people into men's/women's facilities, you must let everyone in. At paragraph 59 the judge says he doesn't think that's necessarily true, it will depend on the facts. But then at paragraph 77 he says 'I do not consider [3a] is necessarily wrong. Rather it may turn on the facts of a situation...'

But 3a uses the word 'must', so isn't the guidance wrong on this point? It should say 'may need to' rather than 'must'?

Glad you finally agree that white is covered by PC.

But "white" is very much a protected characteristic.

It is always a give away when American individuals or groups talk about indigenous within a European context.

I've never suggested it wasn't. It was you who seems to have a bee in your bonnet on the issue. I was initially responding to a post that was trying to draw an equivalence between a 'white only' service and 'women only' service. There is no legal equivalent.

People with these DSDs do not fit a male or female classification because they have a mix of sex traits from the two normal development pathways, so it's meaningless to talk of their birth registration as 'wrong'. Unlike anyone else (including trans people) they can (but not must) change their registration with retroactive effect, depending on their treatment choices. Their registered sex is their biological sex, and the case law clearly distinguishes between the April Ashley situation (sex = gonads + genitals at birth, personal feelings irrelevant) and the W v W situation (sex assigned pragmatically taking into account full picture of birth traits, treatment choices, and individual preference aka gender identity).

This person's employers could always have excluded her because she looks like a man, but not because she is one, because she isn't. FWS did not change her legal situation, but would have done if she was a transwoman. Her manager did not realise this.

I'm not endorsing the case law, just describing it, but I think it works well, just isn't very intuitive.

In a sane world where transwomen are not allowed in the ladies, anyone encountering this individual in there could be tolerably certain that she is a woman with a DSD. But if any doubts remain, they could still ask her to leave.

“Shortshriftandlethal · Today 11:30
'White' is not a protected category in the Equalities Act [sic]”

Not in the way that sex is - in terms of single sex spaces, services and categories.

You cannot have spacess, services or categories which are predicated on skin colour.

Not in the same way that 'sex' is. You cannot have a whites only space, service or category. How many times does that have to be be said?

Respectfully, I think this is expressing a misunderstanding of the EA.

It is not protected in the sense that you can't have a whites only service or membership

That means it is protected.

you can have a membership which is predicated on ethnicity or religion.

Those are exceptions to the protections built into the EA. Colour is actually the most protected characteristic. I don' think there's a single exemption permitting discrimination on the basis of colour; there are dozens of exemptions permitting discrimination on the basis of most of the other PCs.

Again, I think you've inverted the meaning of protected.

A characteristic is protected in the sense that it is unlawful to discriminate (to the detriment of someone) because of that characteristic.

It sounds as if you're understanding "protected" to mean it's permissible to "protect" groups sharing that characteristic. That would be a misunderstanding.

He is very clear elsewhere about sex-segregated meaning segregated by biological sex:

5 One clear consequence of the conclusion reached in For Women Scotland was that if, for example, a service provider provided a service to be used both by women and transsexual women, that service would not be a single-sex service.

I'm not sure that helps much ! It's possibly to quote one bit of the judgment that seems clear as day, and then it gets all opaque😒
Still, fair play to him, he doesn't appear to have used AI to make stuff up😃

People with DSD do fit into male or female classifications. These days with modern medical care, genetics etc their sex can be correctly identified at birth. But historically, and in areas with poor medical resources, they are sometimes misidentified and recorded incorrectly. In these cases their birth certificates can be corrected. This is why sports coaches used to scout certain countries with poor care as boys with certain DSDs were registered as girls by parents who considered lack of normal penis meant a girl.

No, My point lies in relation to the provision of single sex services - which is entirely legal; whereas you cannot have single skin colour services.

The only reason you can have single-sex services (despite sex being a protected characteristic) and, by the way, only if certain very specific and narrowly defined conditions are met - is because there are specific permissions to do so written into schedule 3. Otherwise, and unless those stringent conditions are met, single-sex services are unlawful - equally unlawful as single colour services - because sex is a protected characteristic just like colour.

As long as we're clear that being "white" is also a manifestation of a protected characteristic then there's no issue.

That is because there is an exception for the protected characteristic of sex that allows you to discriminate on the basis of sex.

Important to note it's not by any means a blanket exception. There is a very narrowly defined and clearly specified set of conditions that must be met to make a single-sex service lawful. If your service doesn't meet those conditions, it cannot be single-sex.