Sonia Sodha Profile picture
Dec 10 16 tweets 6 min read Read on X
15 surprising things about the Peggie v NHS Fife ET judgment - a thread 🧵

1. Top of the pops has to be mis/partial quoting of the Supreme Court judgment in a way that badly misrepresents what it said.

2. It also includes a quote supposedly from the Forstater EAT judgment that actually isn’t in the judgment. And went onto say that the Supreme Court in endorsing the Forstater judgment implicitly endorsed that nonexistent quote.Image
3. Its use of partial language (“assigned male at birth”, "trans female” to talk about a male doctor who identifies as trans) while also bending over backwards nog to use pronouns for the male doctor (“second respondent” appears in judgment > 1k times) is weirdly inconsistent.
4. It misunderstands the Supreme Court in a pretty fundamental way. Here it seems to think the alternative to “can separate by sex” is “can allow men to self-identify into female-only services” not “mixed sex”. It leaves out the rest of the paragraph that makes this clear. Image
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5. Here the judgment totally ignores the far more likely meaning of the Supreme Court judgment - which is that there has never been a right for men to self-identify into female-only spaces, services and support. Image
6. How is excluding someone male from a female-only space unlawful direct or indirect discrimination when they are being excluded on the basis of their sex not their gender reassignment, so the comparator is a male without PC of GR? Image
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7. Imagine applying these arguments to disability. The implication here of disabled people not being able to use non-accessible toilets is not they are unemployable, but that employers must make arrangements for accessible provision. Same goes for trans people and third spaces. Image
8. Men are no greater risk to women in a changing room environment than women, apparently. Image
9. The effect of claimant’s understanding of the Supreme Court judgment is that no one male can *ever* go into a female changing room or toilet to clean or make repairs. And third spaces are “unworkable” for employers… despite the fact it would v likely be OK for a small employer to combine a single accessible and gender neutral facility.Image
10. Women can’t articulate their belief men can’t change sex in a way that says men aren’t women because to do so is to say a man who believes he’s a woman is wrong to do so. Image
11. In fact to do so is proselytising.

12. Here the ET seems to ignore that the Equality Act contains single-sex exceptions not single-gender-reassignment exceptions. (Here it does NOT limit its conclusion to workplaces but implies this applies to all changing rooms.)Image
13. But then the ET goes on to say it thinks the Supreme Court judgment applies only to service providers, not employers/workplaces - despite the fact that the Supreme Court does not explicitly draw this limitation around its judgment (and surely would have done if that had been what they meant?)Image
14. Really????? Even given the existence of the 1992 Workplace Regulations specifying employers must have separate toilets for men and women unless they’re individual/lockable rooms? Image
15. And then there's what the ET seems to think it means to appear female... in a word, it's "feminine". (The 1950s called wanting its ET judgment back.)

There's more, but at that's enough for now.

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More from @soniasodha

Dec 8
The Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife judgment has landed. A partial win for Peggie but I’m not sure the ET have understood the Supreme Court judgment here and so I expect it’s very likely to be appealed. (The following is from the press summary of the judgment) Image
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It’s hard to understand how an ET panel could arrive at the conclusion it’s lawful for a biological man to be in a female-only changing room at work post FWS. This will be v important aspect of any appeal.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 8
📻 On @BBCr4today this morning I discussed BBC bias on gender ideology - Justin Webb sanctioned for clarifying trans women are male while the BBC misleads viewers by pretending male killers are female - and why as a friend of the BBC I want them to sort it out - listen here!
And read this excellent column for more. It’s not just people on the right who worry about the BBC’s obvious lack of impartiality - its disrespect for and bias against women opposed to men self-identifying into female-only spaces is of huge concern to feminists on the left too.
Telegraph has picked up the comments, here

telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/0…
Read 4 tweets
Oct 31
The govt has asked for an impact assessment that could take a year before it lays the statutory guidance on Equality Act/gender/sex before Parliament. But it's guidance on law *as it already stands*

Cowardly and pathetic from a govt scared to implement the law on women's rights Image
Claire Coutinho 100% right on this. This is Starmer/Phillipson running scared of their own backbenchers rather than prioritising women's rights to single-sex services and sports via clear guidance that explains the law *as it exists*. Utterly pathetic.

thetimes.com/article/d7cd9e…Image
To be clear, it's 100% irrelevant whatever the EHRC regulatory impact assessment would say. It doesn't matter. The law is the law, and this is guidance to help organisations stay on right side of it. It's just the govt is too scared to back the law on women's rights. For shame.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 25
Completely disagree on this. Grooming gangs a particular phenomenon not looked at by Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse. Louise Casey was clear on need for specific inquiry including to look at why men from some cultural backgrounds over-represented in the data. People in authority don’t need another excuse to avoid the issues including why people looked the other way for so long.
For too long “there are other types of child sexual exploitation” (yes, there are and they’re truly awful) has been used to obscure proper investigation of grooming gangs including hard look at what role cultural factors and racism played. The police still aren’t even collecting the data we need on this. Not good enough for victims.
Yes there are commonalities with all forms of child sexual abuse, which I’ve written about. But there are partic aspects of grooming gang rape and abuse that have never been confronted by national investigation and will not be without a specific focus. It would be a very serious mistake to broaden it.
Read 4 tweets
May 20
Reading through the @EHRC draft changes to its statutory code that it is consulting on from today. Some helpful examples including for those who think pre pubescent boys pose a comparable risk to women’s privacy safety and dignity as grown men who identify as female (!!!) Image
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Some more here Image
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And some more, showing the toilet question while not the most important implication of the Supreme Court judgment really isn’t as impossible as detractors like to make out Image
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Read 5 tweets
Apr 23
Wow. This Guardian editorial on the Supreme Court ruling gets so much wrong, including factually, and smears a public servant who’s only doing her job. 🧵 Image
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1. Lord Sumption is completely wrong that the Supreme Court’s statement of the law doesn’t mandate service providers to exclude trans women from female-only services. If you’re operating female-only services now they must not admit men who identify as female. Or they can be mixed sex.
2. Kishwer Falkner’s tone was not “implying compulsion”. She was stating the law, as above. It’s really unfair for a newspaper to take this tone, implying this was personal preference rather than the actual law.
Read 8 tweets

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