Thread by @michaelpforan

Suspending my Twitter break for a wee 🧵 on the Mermaids v LGB Alliance decision:

The first thing to note here is that the respondent is not principally LGB Alliance, it’s the Charity Commission for England and Wales. The core of this case is the decision of the Charity Commission to register LGB Alliance as a charity.

The Charity Commission is the expert body here and enjoys a presumption that it’s decisions are valid, lawful, and correct. But there is scope for some people to challenge a decision to register a charity IF (and only if) you have standing to do so.

If you have standing - the legal right - to challenge the decision of the Charity Commission, it will be a full merits appeal. This means that the decision will be remade by the tribunal. That’s a big thing. It’s not asking whether the decision was lawful, it’s remaking it.

There is no general right for just anyone to do this, for obvious reasons. The presumption is that the Commission is the primary decision maker. It would be an administrative nightmare if every decision to register a charity could be appealed to the courts by anyone who disagrees

So you need to have express permission to do this. The Charities Act 2011 sets out who can bring a challenge to a decision to register a charity: the Attorney General or persons set out in schedule 6 of the Act.

Mermaids has claimed that it has standing because it is affected or may be affected by the decision to register LGB Alliance as a charity. The tribunal in this case concluded that it does not have standing and so had no legal basis to bring this challenge.

The tribunal came to this conclusion because it accepted that in order to be affected by a decision, the registration of LGB Alliance must have had an identifiable impact upon Mermaids’ legal rights:

So now the onus is on Mermaids to establish that it’s legal rights were affected by this decision. The Tribunal made it clear that merely disagreeing with the decision, emotionally, politically, or intellectually is not sufficient.

Mermaids made two arguments. Firstly that making LGBA a charity will give it access to funds that will allow it to criticise Mermaids more effectively. The Tribunal concluded that Mermaids has no legal right to be free from criticism, so this isn’t an interference with its rights

Secondly, Mermaids claimed that registering LGB Alliance as a charity will create competition with it for funding. The Tribunal dismissed this argument too. There is no legal right to have easy access to funding.

Because of this, the Tribunal concluded that Mermaids was not affected in any relevant sense by the decision to register LGB Alliance as a charity. The decision was not about Mermaids, it had nothing to do with them.

Someone affected by the decision can bring a challenge and the Attorney General has the power to do so if they think that it is in the public interest. But this is not a general right of any person who would like to get a charity deregistered.

Some have asked, if Mermaids doesn’t have standing how will anyone be able to challenge the decision to register it as a charity? The response is clear: there is no general right to get a court to retake the decisions of the Charity Commission just because you disagree with it.