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!

I don’t disagree with your points! They’re absolutely true!

Ideally, surely, there should be an international standard agreed on passports. Now we have a situation where some countries allow a 'I' or 'X' sex markers, and some don't. Which should never have been permitted, in my view. But that's where we are. What to do about edge cases, like people with a DSD who have been socialised since birth as one sex, whereas biologically they are another, is a more difficult question. But vanishingly rare edge cases shouldn't drive what happens to the other 99%.

Sex matters have a proposal on how sex could reliably be included on an id card. Same could be used for occasions where sex verification is needed without an id card:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@
For people born in the UK, the most straightforward approach would be to cross-reference with the birth register (which is being digitised), since this has been kept accurate (including for people with gender-recognition certificates).
For those born in other countries, other reliable administrative data sources would need to be found. This could include certain statutory records. For example, if someone is registered as the mother on the birth record of a child born in the UK, this is proof that the person is female. If a person married before 2004 and is registered as a husband or wife, this is also accurate proof of sex. Other possibilities would be their GP vouching for their sex (in response to an unambiguous question about sex, not gender identity), or a cheek-swab test from a validated source (such as for an athlete).

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@“

AFAIK the GRA goes further than Europe required. And it absolutely needs to be repealed though this isn’t going to be possible in the immediate future.

Can you imagine a climate where it could be repealed, though? I can just imagine the headlines, the outrage. In a world where everyone is scared to call a spade a spade...

The GRA? Yeah the world where the next GE is NOT won by a broad left coalition that includes the Greens.

but I absolutely do not see that future happening.

Our political views differ, OP, but I was referring to more than the narrow picture of HoC majorities. There's the media, the inertia of the Civil Service, the trades unions even, etc etc. We talk abut politicians 'running the country' and whether they're good or bad at it, but the truth is, they don't, civil servants do. And if pols want to make change, they have to fight real hard to do so.

im a policy voter not tribal, honestly.

I’ve also worked in and around the civil service for years.

id vote for any party that promised to sack the bottom performing 5% of the CS each year

And to add, I completely agree politicians do not run the country. Not at all. It’s head teachers, it’s those in charge of the Hampstead ponds, it’s senior NHS hr staff, its senior civil servants in local councils

they all seem to think they know better

It equally points to the stupidity of the govt over the past 10 years who have allowed practice to go unchallenged when it's illegal and against policy, who have effectively surrendered authority to unelected groups of know it alls, and still expect a very nice income as MPs.

Really at this point, why? Where's the value for money there? Are we a democracy or not? Why are these people wasting all this time being carefully elected and paid to do it if effectively it's just toothless and meaningless wittering without impact and law is becoming an optional thing? With all the classism and narrow mindedness and lack of equality of diversity that happens when a very particular group of middle class middle management become the defacto govt.

Hello all :)

I found this article quite interesting:

https://nuntiatoria.org/2026/05/15/the-law-reasserts-its-limits-ls-v-nhs-england-and-the-collapse-of-assumption-in-public-policy/

That looks a good piece of analysis to me. We done Faye, and congratulations!

What an excellent write up

I'm bookmarking that article, it is so good.

Thank you so much for persevering @FayeRC. We are all in your debt💚💜

I don’t think we’re at the stage where it’s a possibility yet, but I think it will be in future.

Good grief that is good.

Seeing that in an article, that 'getting ahead of the law' (and normalising chosen practice with the aim of replacing/discarding unwanted law) is wrong, and cannot be permitted, feels yet another huge, huge step forward.

Thank you! And a huge well done!

Small request from me...

If you find yourself doing follow-ups on this (anonymously, of course) please could you also big-up the importance of lack of gender identity belief being protected?

While it's helpful legally that "gender critical beliefs" are protected, it unfortunately doesn't help on the ground in public institutions that are bound by the Nolan Principles of objectivity. For example in schools, which have to be neutral, it would be easy for them to tell a parent to back off and stop "promoting a belief" in a school, if they declare themselves to hold a gender critical belief by way of explaining why they don't think schools should uncritically adopt children's preferred pronouns. In other words, it becomes belief-deadlock rather than gender identity belief versus objective facts like there being two sexes etc. Personally, I don't hold "gender critical beliefs" because I don't even have the time to philosophise about what they are. I just know that I don't believe everyone has a gender identity and I won't be coerced or guilt-tripped into pretending that I do.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely delighted that you got this outcome and that it referred to belief as well as harassment. Amazing stuff 👏👏👏👏

Here is the info re protection for lack of belief:

https://x.com/anyabike/status/1749777661855940901?s=19

Edited for spelling

That is an excellent point. A lack of participation is framed and positioned as an extremist political belief system of its own and I agree with you, I don't have a particularly formed belief or any desire to impose it, beyond 'I don't want to participate, and I still want equality of access for all women'. It's live and let live.

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"!

This argument presupposes that the GRA would be replaced by legislation allowing people to change their birth certificates on the basis of Self-ID. That does not necessarily follow.

it is useful in limiting the spread of gender stuff

Seriously, how can the GRA be said to have "limited the spread of gender stuff"?

It did the exact opposite.

The GRA was celebrated by the likes of Stephen Whittle for redefining "sex" in UK law and as a step towards finally abolishing "sex" in UK law, ie. replacing it with "gender", ie. "gender identity". That has always been their ultimate aim.

''Sex Changes'? Paradigm Shifts in 'Sex' and 'Gender' Following the Gender Recognition Act?'
by Stephen Whittle and Lewis Turner, Manchester Metropolitan University
2007

"8.7 As the Gender Recognition Act states that one’s acquired gender becomes one’s legal sex then there is little difference between sex and gender. Indeed sex is preceded and exceeded by gender by the terms of the Gender Recognition Act. Sex in this sense is determined by gender identity – the social role that one chooses to take. This reverses the original gender attribution at birth which as based on the genitals (and strictly speaking not based on other ‘known’ identifiers of biological sex such as chromosomes). For the Gender Recognition Act, the body is irrelevant, as neither bodily modification, nor the presence or lack of a penis is determinative. Moreover, the Gender Recognition Act is performative (see Butler 1990), in that as a form of speech-act, what it ‘does’ is makes gender into sex in law. Indeed, as one of the authors was present at the meeting in the Department of Constitutional Affairs where the question of ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ was discussed, it can be verified that the decision to use gender was to bring a contemporary recognition of the complexities of the question to the Act. The decision to include ‘sex’ as well as gender within the GRA was to acknowledge this and to ensure that the Act could not be challenged."

"Changing sex for the purposes of legal recognition then, is not about changing biology or changing bodies to ‘match’ genders, but about changing how sex is legally defined."

https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/621107/1/2007-Whittle%20Turner%20-Sex%20Changes%20-Paradigm%20Shifts%20in%20Sex%20%26%20Gender.pdf

(Whittle could not help bragging that she was "present at the meeting in the Department of Constitutional Affairs where the question of ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ was discussed". Later she went further and admitted/claimed that she was not a passive observer but instead that she had a determinative advisory role.)

giving trans people reasonable rights in relation to the state

That is all that was required of the UK, nothing more. The GRA was criticised by legislators during the passage of the Bill for "gold plating" far beyond what was required of the UK.

In addition, the arguments about equal marriage rights and pensions are no longer valid.

All else that was required of the UK was some sort of recognition that, in so many words, "trans people exist". It was not stipulated that the UK had to allow them to change their birth certificates.

The GRA set in train reams of policy tailored to provide privilege and secrecy.

Likewise, the definition of "Gender Reassignment" was not a mandate that the UK had to adopt. Having been enshrined in the GRA, that wooly definition was then plugged into the Equality Act 2010.

The Labour Government under Tony Blair (and, de facto, Alastair Campbell) at the time of the passage of the GRA Bill wanted to go much further than was required. It got away with it through a combination of stealth, lies and voting power.

Apropos of nothing . . . research results indicate that approximately 5% of heterosexual men are sexually attracted to intact transvestites.

By contrast, homosexual men taking part in those experiments did not experience involuntary indications of sexual arousal.

That is, approx 5% straight men and most gay men really do see them as "chicks with dicks".

Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women
K. J. Hsu*, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey
2015
d-miller.github.io/assets/HsuEtAl2015.pdf

IMHO the task now for GC top legal brains should be to propose legislation (drafts and or redrafts) that would make repeal of the GRA a political possibility.

That's an excellent article, Faye. Many thanks for sharing - and congratulations!

Apropos of nothing . . . research results indicate that approximately 5% of heterosexual men are sexually attracted to intact transvestites.
By contrast, homosexual men taking part in those experiments did not experience involuntary indications of sexual arousal.
That is, approx 5% straight men and most gay men really do see them as "chicks with dicks".

Very interesting. I'm going to assume that some of these 5% of men have managed to get themselves in useful positions of power and influence.

And obviously those are the men that aren't the transvestites i.e. to the rest of the world, they look like the average bloke. Presumably some will go on to discover their True Authentic Self requires a dress, but enough will presumably not go on to do so.

So it's going to be more than 5% of men in total who likely have an active interest in fulfilling their needs in some way.

Apropos of nothing, some people will influence all sorts of things in all sorts of creative ways to influence outcomes in their favour.

IMO it's going to become increasingly important to champion lack of belief in gender identity as the way to push back. It works for everything, from pronouns to sports and spaces.

Lack of belief in gender identity is reason enough not to be expected to perform the tenets of that belief.

It works for every belief. For example, I can support someone having a Muslim belief but I don't need to start praying 5 times a day to do so.

By extension, I'm not going to use pronouns that don't match someone's sex or accept males in women's sports and spaces, just because according to gender identity belief they are "women". I can choose how I show my support for them to hold their belief e.g. in my case, I avoid all pronoun use.

But there are plenty of other ways to support others' belief e.g. many people use sex-based pronouns and still want trans-identifying people to have equal (not more) rights to live, work, love etc etc. Ignoring the overreach of the GRA, the Equality Act has been written in a way that achieves this.

I agree this would be good as a long term goal .

my point about limiting the spread is compared to other countries eg Oz where sex and gender are totally muddled up creating an impossible untangleable knot… not tgat it was a fabulous idea. But in hindsight it’s going to be part of the genderists undoing

I haven't been following Sall Grover's case and need to catch up. However, I have seen people saying that the way the Oz legislation has been drafted means that there is no chance of an equivalent to the Supreme Court judgement in FWS taking place, ie. with a ruling that separates sex and gender identity in anti-discrimination legislation. So the Oz legislation would need to change.

Was it in Oz or NZ that lesbians got a ruling that they are now legally permitted to exclude men from associations and meetings?

Cough!

Campbell and Stewart are in love with Sarah McBride (Two Gamps and a bloke)