Consequences of ls v NHSE England court win, discuss & explore the detail of judgement, what this means for other cases and institutions

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

https://didlaw.com/ls-v-nhse-england

Don't want valuable discussion of what this means and the detail of the case judgement to get lost in the other (very valid) threads.

Yesterdays case feels quote significant, would like to explore what it means!

This is why everyone should be capturing sex as a characteristic.

You ask for sex - and if not provided the man who has a female gender identity cannot be allowed to accompany girls on a school trip.

Ask for sex, and you can ask for gender. But a passport is not a sex ID document. Where it matters better evidence needs to be given. A clear policy needs to be set out.

I can only imagine there are safeguarding rules around this, and as sex matters in this case it has to be the biological meaning of male and female.

There is a case going through about toilets in childrens schools. If you are a parent I would refuse to send my child on a residential where a man who identifies as a woman is sleeping in the dorms.

On data capture, I was at an NHS health screening event yesterday and we were all asked to complete a survey at the end.

In the EDI section of the survey ( which was voluntary) the first question was “what is your gender?” The options were male, female, gender queer or non binary, agender, prefer not to say and other with a text box).

The second question was “Is your gender identity the same as your sex registered at birth?” With the options yes, no and prefer not to say.

I fucking hate questions that assume everyone has a gender identity. If gender identity is relevant for data capture then it should be asked after any questions on sex. I’m not arguing that data on gender should never be collected but the wording if these particular questions is absolutely in activist language.

I left the questions blank and answered other optional questions about age and religion and sexuality.

From a workplace regs perspective - I think that the imminent EHRC update will also support.

The EHRC’s interim update essentially said that trans people should be prohibited from using single-sex facilities aligned to their gender identity in the workplace. I think this should include places where people change - so female children cannot change a place where a man will change as that is not a single sex space.

I haven't reas teh KCSIE latest draft but safeguarding would apply to residential settings

Safeguarding and Child Protection (e.g., Keeping Children Safe in Education - KCSIE, Education Act 2002 s.175): Schools have a statutory duty to safeguard and promote pupil welfare. This includes appropriate staffing, supervision, and risk assessments for residential visits. Staff must avoid situations that could lead to allegations or harm. Overnight arrangements require clear protocols for access to rooms, night checks, and boundaries.

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and related guidance: Requires suitable risk assessments for educational visits, including accommodation, supervision ratios, and emergency procedures. The Department for Education (DfE) and OEAP National Guidance emphasize effective supervision.

Equality Act 2010 (sex as a protected characteristic): Allows single-sex accommodations and services in certain circumstances (e.g., for privacy, decency, or safety). Schools can (and often should) arrange single-sex pupil sleeping areas. For staff supervision, matching the sex of the group supports privacy and dignity, especially during changing, sleeping, or personal care. Exceptions exist, but blanket policies must be justified.

Teachers' Standards and professional conduct: Teachers must maintain professional boundaries and act as role models. Staying in or entering pupil rooms (especially alone or opposite-sex) carries safeguarding risks.

The school should have single sex policies and confirm biological sex. If the person lies on their record they are commiting a breach of contract and probably a criminal act of voyeurism or exhibitionism and should be dealt with accordingly.

If there is something specific happy to take a DM

Who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to allow people to change the sex marker on their passports? Should never have been done; the problems it would (and has) caused were obvious from the start. It shows what a hold fuckwittery has had on the body politic in the UK for quite some years now.

I thought it was interesting that this judgement mentioned the expansive definition of trans used in the local NHS guidance. It didn’t make much of a point of this. But there clearly was a mismatch between Stonewall-influenced guidelines which included cross-dressers v local praxis which reportedly was on the basis of full-time gender presentation (although perhaps with flexibility, though this was expressed in a mealy mouthed manner). Then in yet another scenario, during the tribunal there was discussion of a hypothetical male who has undergone surgery. The tribunal didn’t (need to) base any part of its judgment on these discrepancies, but did make sure to note them.

This lack of any stable definition of what trans might mean in either law of practice is, I think, one of the main reasons the movement is losing so spectacularly in the courts and in public opinion.

Reading the Supreme Court judgement, it looks like the realization that in practice anyone can get a GRC was a significant reason for rejecting its validity as a basis for a new legal sex. Iirc the judgement comments on the complete absence of requirements for anything but a change of name on a utility bill.

This was a massive overstep by trans activists. The wider they made the definition of trans, the less likely it was to be able to hold any kind of legal status.

Of course that was inevitable. Since nothing can actually change someone’s sex, it was necessary for them to claim that by doing nothing, people had nonetheless changed their sex. But initial definitions like in the GRA were fluffy enough that this (apparently) wasn’t fully evident to lawmakers.

Pushing for self-ID while opening a ‘trans umbrella’ including cross-dressers etc turned the headlights on the definitions or lack thereof.

Then of course now there are fools like Green Q who claim all kinds of special words which change constantly and blow out of the water any kind of stable legal definition.

The Gender Recognition Act can and should be repealed (and not replaced with anything)

There used to be clear guidelines for school trips / residentials about the ratio of girls / boys and the sex of staff accompanying. I suspect that in our brave new world the DfE capitulated to the demands of trans activists and removed this as a quick look at the guidance I can find, makes no specific mention of this.

Obviously there's a difference between a trip to the local library and a 3 day residential, but for residentials (and boarding schools) it's a loophole that does need addressing.

I don’t think a GRC is needed to change passport sex?

But yes, the GRA needs repealing. Letting people claim to have changed sex by putting a new name on their utility bills was always a terrible idea.

I am worried about the likely changes in PM and Ministers. I’m especially concerned that Andy Burnham sides much more with the “be kind and inclusive” side than women’s safety privacy and dignity. He talks about a new consensus !

SecretSquirrelLoo This was a massive overstep by trans activists. The wider they made the definition of trans, the less likely it was to be able to hold any kind of legal status.

I think this is a crucial point. Gradually, the UK courts are doing what the law can sometimes be good at: looking really closely at something and picking holes in it.

It's a pity there wasn't more of it before the GRA etc were enacted, but there has been a succession of judgments which have looked at genderwoo and gone 'But there's no there there!' because there's no clear settled definition of gender, transgender, transitioning etc etc.
The result is the law beclowning itself by validating an impossibility - the
legal fiction that people can in any way change sex.

It's even worse here in Ireland where there's self-ID, the law has outsourced the beclowning to anybody who wants to claim they've changed sex.

edited to wonder if that should be 'the GRA etc was enacted'? That sounds right, but the 'etc' makes it plural... anyway, you know what I mean

Just thinking back to that question posed to Starmer, "can a woman have a penis?" The only sensible answer is "Fuck me, of course not!", but it seems there is literally no-one in the Labour Party brave enough to say that out loud. This where we are, and have been for years, and this why we have lunacies like non-binary passports. And, of course, the madness has descended in plenty of other countries too.

Well indeed.

Although on a plus note, Fred the LSA (gulp) will presumably be covered under employment law as a service provider in a public body ... so I'm hoping that existing case law and the stuff that's yet to come from Peggie/Kelly does apply 🤞

Thank you.

If you are a parent I would refuse to send my child on a residential where a man who identifies as a woman is sleeping in the dorms.

It's more a case of accessing, to supervise as and when. Staff will sleep separately, but (in theory at least) only female staff are meant to access girls' accommodation. In practice that won't be what's happening when a male member of staff is recorded as being female and/or identifies as a woman.

Edited to add: but like you say, the policy should make it clear that staff's sex is relevant here, even if they have a GRC.

Where it's going to get extra complicated is when they've gone down the "sensitive" DBS route and their sex is hidden. But that will be the same in any employment situation that requires a DBS check, not just schools.

Yes, I had a look through all the various embedded links when I was responding to the KCSIE guidance and got very lost.... but couldn't see anything that nailed it down. Thank you for helping me know I hadn't gone mad! Interesting (and concerning) that it used to be there but now isn't.

Ps @usernameinserthere irrespective of that loophole, thank you for all the info on the question I asked.

I could only read the first message. I can't do any more!!!

Unironically if you're a terf you should just be forced to use the gender neutral toilets. That's already a "biological single-sex space" because they only contain one person. But terfs don't want to have a space they can use they just want trans people to not have a space.

It's clear that in future it may be even more necessary sometimes to prove your birth sex, and, thanks to the GRA, this has become impossible for almost everyone other than by providing a birth certificate that was issued before their eighteenth birthday.

The Registrar may have to come up with solutions for people who have lost or destroyed the original document.

Loving the toilet discussions! I have been saying for a long time that it’s going to be really difficult and expensive to get this right which is why, when BP said she was talking to the HSE and EHRC I was happy she was taking her time - I think I must be unique in that way. Toilets are complicated!

Toilets have been ‘bodged’ for so long. Document T was an attempt to make the health and safety rules accessible to the public - I have my criticisms but it tries to make very detailed Building Control clearer and free. It covers all buildings (shops, venues, businesses) bar a couple of exceptions, including schools. This is for England. The rules are in place for health and safety.

All the countries have similar building regulations for non-domestic toilets. For instance, for years it has been stated by all that they should have toilet doors that open from the outside outwards in an emergency. In my research, this still isn’t in place and I know of young people who have died in the last couple of years where the fire brigade have had to be called to get to them, wasting time when they are in a critical state. In another case in a pub recently the staff used a sledgehammer to get to a young person who subsequently died.

There were lots of costs analysis that went into document T and they decided it was to be retrospective - that is anywhere (businesses, shops, venues) with a non-domestic toilet would comply if they were a new building or were doing a refurbishment.

HOWEVER, this is where it gets fun because this was before FWS. So, those businesses and venues that have been good and kept to regulations have nothing to worry about.

However, venues that have gone for all mixed sex designs which is not following building regs, are now going to have problems. And if they do a refurbishment, which they almost certainly will have to do, it will have to comply with building regs if they want to be compliant.

It really won’t be popular because it’s going to cost a lot of money. Who picks up the bill? Schools are the worst because they didn’t have to comply with 1992 legislation but the DfE allowed the designs.

Document T is based on British Standards 6465 (parts 1 to 4). I am seeing British Standards being quoted more and more such as in this year’s school design guidance now (hurrah).

No - having listened to Naomi Cunningham and Akua Reindorf, the GRC is what has put Terf island into a good position compared to other countries. It is "a wide gate, leading to a short paddock" according to Naomi - whereas other places have self ID which is a "wide gate to the whole bloody hill side"! So please don't campaign to get rid - it is useful in limiting the spread of gender stuff while also giving trans people reasonable rights in relation to the state (just not in relation to other people)

That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of it like that.

I think it should go from every other perspective, but in terms of Realpolitik, that works.

I agree with the tactic of leaving it (and the protected characteristic of gender reassignment) in place because to do otherwise looks unmagnaminous.

But these laws actually give trans people nothing, apart from making it easier for them to conceal their sex, which needs to be got rid of too.

They are already adequately protected from discrimination under the headings of belief and disability.

And, since the equalisation of laws on marriage, tax, and pensions, the two sexes have identical rights in the UK, except in some narrow circumstances where sex matters. The SC has declared that the narrow rights that arise in those circumstances cannot be transferred to an opposite-sex person just by giving them a certificate.

Apart from the above, trans people already have all the rights of the opposite sex, just as we all do.

There is literally only one right that isn't shared by the sexes, and yet to which actual sex is completely irrelevant, and that's the right to inherit a peerage. If the GRC is supposed to confer cross-sex rights, how about fixing this needless exemption in the GRA, so that transmen can take titles away from their younger brothers or male cousins?

Maybe Thats the Achilles heel? If we all campaign for that exception to be removed then the old boys will decide to kill off this stuff? Cant have any daughters inheriting can we?! 🙄

still haven’t tracked down a copy - my library won’t do an inter library loan… on my wish list

Gender ideology is inherently misogynistic - it’s there in law!

I fundamentally disagree with the state falsifying official documents

There must be a better way around it than this

Well if you put it like that…. However that’s the instruction that came from Europe. So until we get back to ECtHR i think we are stuck with it. And the SC renders it almost useless anyway