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

Akua Reindorf KC:
This is beyond a joke now

https://x.com/akuareindorf/status/2022425322680156335

Yet another Labour MP lying …

Just for lolz, there is a UK Gov petition to add "social class" as a protected characteristic ...

Hard to argue against such a move with integrity when you have already included other human inventions as PCs.

Michael Foran has published his thoughts on the ruling. Provides some clarification of the point discussed on here that the GLP have latched onto.
“It is important to be clear what Swift J did and did not say in this paragraph. This was not a conclusion about anything other than the argument that could potentially be made in response to a hypothetical claim of sex discrimination brought by a man excluded from trans inclusive ‘female’ lavatory. Nothing in this paragraph implies that such a lavatory would be lawful, even if the sex discrimination claim brought by an excluded man failed. Swift J did not say that it would fail. All he said here is that there is scope for a strong argument that a sex discrimination claim brought by a man might fail. If it did, the lawfulness of allowing trans women to access female-only facilities or services would depend on other applicable law, including the 1992 Regulations and the claims that could be brought from female service users based on sex discrimination and the Human Rights Act.”
https://knowingius.org/p/good-law-project-v-ehrc

The problem with the issue of who uses which toilet is that it is covered by more than one piece of legislation/regulation.
Well, the main problem is the recent rise of a tiny number of noisy and occasionally violent men making unreasonable demands, but apart from that... it's the mosaic of laws and regs that makes it so unclear.

The obscure para 61 in which the judge muses about whether or not it would really be discrimination against non-trans men if they were only allowed use the men's whereas TIMs could use the women's if the men's was completely equivalent to the women's in terms of location, quality, facilities, fancy soap - OK I made up the last one!

In that very specific circumstance, letting TIMs use the women's might not be discrimination against non-trans men under the EA2010. Note he only said 'might not'.

But the EA2010 is only one thing - what about the women who are now forced to share their women's toilet with males?
The judge has made clear in para 5 that
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.

So if the women were entitled to single-sex facilities under other rules, e.g. workplace regulations, or building regs., they could make the case that they were being discriminated against by failure to provide the single-sex toilets they were entitled to under a different set of regs.
It's not just equality legislation.

The judge also referred to things like 'propriety' and 'conventional decency' as factors in determining who uses which facilities.

edited to say cross posted with previous post which quotes M Foran, who seems to be saying the same as me about the tricky para 61. So I may be right!

I presume you are an atheist? The PC of belief protects you too.

Beautifully clear. Thank you.

The protected characteristics :

Sex - protects men and women
Age - protects the young, the old, those of working age
Race - protects those of all hues
Religion and belief - protects those of every faith and none
Sexuality - protects lesbians, gays, bisexuals and heterosexuals
Pregnancy - protects pregnant women including around miscarriage
Disability - protects those with any form of disability
Marriage or civil partnership - protects married, divorced, widowed and single people
Gender reassignment - protects those starting the process of seeking a GRC

The key point is that EVERYBODY has at least three PCs, most people have five

People forget that DIE was introduced to force the Robber Barron muiti-nationals to be good citizens in their home country.

It spawned into a monster which was pushing down their supply chains into tiny sole traders and also disrupted internal workings and there are rumblings about rolling up social costs into the consumer cost (Eg the disposal of end of life cars and staff in publishing deciding they were making publish blacklists) and its all cutting the bottom line.

Potential for hugh costs / more regulation / international benchmarking /etc and throw in the US culture of survival of the fittest all etc etc worked against it.

GI is about as individualistic as any social movement can get. Its about trying to pull and push society in everywhich way to match the individual want. Meanwhile social provision is a social contract based on meeting (minimum) needs.

On a high level is no real upside for an employer to support GI in the workforce

@Rainingrain
https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/britains-first-trans-judge-crowdfunds-to-challenge-uk-in-strasbourg

It is pregnancy and maternity

How do you conclude people might only be covered by three or five?

Anyone else read the helpful analysis by Prof Michael Foran? It’s an email round robin, so check it out if you’re subscribed to Ius.

@GargoylesofBeelzebub sorry, see you’ve posted this already. Hopefully quite a few posters will read it tonight or over the weekend.

But atheism is like religion. All made up. Ironically.

Yes, I thought it was interesting.

https://open.substack.com/pub/knowingius/p/good-law-project-v-ehrc

So currently not going anywhere?

....there's an inherent assumption that a woman's toilet is for something other than women's biological needs.

The entire concept of allowing transwomen into women's toilets, in any circumstances, is based purely on male validation, for which the women's presence is crucial.

The concept itself is bloody sexist.

I don't think this exact point, articulated in this way had actually occurred to me before!

It's mini lightbulb moment.
Thanks Datun

I've said before that I believe that requiring every employer/service provider/etc to provide a mixed sex 'fourth space' if they have sex-segregated toilets for men and women is disproportionate to the number of transpeople in the population.

The judgement refers to
a situation where the consequence of the single-sex provision is either no provision for transsexual persons or a requirement that all must use lavatories corresponding to biological sex. Such an outcome would have to be justified as proportionate. [71]

I suggest a justification would be that it is not proportionate to require the provision of fourth spaces everywhere, when the potential user-group constitutes such a small proportion of the population.

The size of the potential user-group for third spaces in the UK is approx. 16-17 million disabled people; the size of the potential user-group for fourth spaces is approx. 262,000 transpeople.

I am not disabled.
I am not pregnant, I have no young children.
I am not seeking a GRC
I am heterosexual so less likely to be discriminated against
I am atheist so less likely to want religious accommodations
I am white with English as my first language so less likely to endure racism
I am of working age so less likely to face ageism

Yes, they don't want the rooms, they want the women in those rooms. Otherwise a mixed sex space would be perfectly acceptable.

It doesn’t matter if you are less likely to experience discrimination, you are still protected from it.

the size of the potential user-group for fourth spaces is approx. 262,000 transpeople.

Only if they are only available to transpeople which I haven’t heard suggested should be the case. Other people might prefer a single occupancy space - if only due to proximity.

And the first things target would be social mobility schemes as they exclude the people with the money to sue the scheme into oblivion🤷‍♀️😬

Its in fund raising.

But from my understanding so tbc

The European Court of Human Rights ruling can be ignored as unlike the UK courts (which can remove laws off the books) it does not have the power to "force" the sitting Uk government to introduce and pass new laws.

So the UK courts say this is what is written on the tin and is what is in the tin. The EU says that not fair so please change the formula by adding in "whatever". The UK can say no we like the original formula.

The European Court of Human Rights ruling can be ignored as unlike the UK courts (which can remove laws off the books)

Unless my limited understanding is too limited, UK courts cannot "strike down" a law (we aren't American thank the Gods). The very most they can do is to rule that a law is incompatible with obligations under an international treaty that the UK is a signatory too.

If a new law happens to contradict an existing law, then the new law is used.

Ask the muppets who tried to throw out the Brexit WCA treaty as it broke the 1800 Acts of Union. A case where the judge said "So it does. Now what was your point ?" in (and there is a point in this thread) a amusing example of the dangers of actually believing on the shite you peddle.

Does anyone have a share token for Michael Foran's Substack? I see he is doing a Q&A tomorrow