Harriet Haynes, a man who says he is a woman (and holds a GRC), sued the EBPF for excluding him from women's competitions and teams. He complained of discrimination because of gender reassignment.
May 30 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A new version of the Equal Treatment Bench Book is out. Definite improvements to Chapter 12 "Trans People".
The new version is to be found here. judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…
May 8 • 28 tweets • 3 min read
There’s an astonishing quantity of nonsense being talked about the Supreme Court’s FWS judgment, still, including by otherwise reputable lawyers who should know better.
So let's get a few things straight.
May 7 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Some comments in response to this disappointing piece by employment solicitors @traverssmith
There’s still a lot of misguided and inaccurate advice being disseminated by lawyers about the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland. It’s a worry.traverssmith.com/knowledge/know…1. There are only complex questions now because employers have been unlawfully operating self-ID policies for years.
May 6 • 25 tweets • 3 min read
There will be a great deal of this, and it will be infuriating. More employees will lose their jobs for trying to persuade their employers to comply with the law.
A few thoughts about how to put pressure on your employer while minimising the risk to your job.
Apr 16 • 41 tweets • 12 min read
The Legal Feminists have been reading the judgment of the Supreme Court in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers with some interest. 🧵
thetimes.com/uk/society/art…
It's a long judgment, and there will be plenty to digest, so this is just a first impression of some of the key points.
Dec 4, 2024 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
A short🧵 on @barstandards' proposal to require barristers to "act in a way that advances equality, diversity and inclusion" (proposed new Core Duty 8).
"Gender-critical" barristers have expressed anxieties that the proposed new duty will be used to suppress dissent from fashionable orthodoxies, including gender identity theory.
Oct 20, 2024 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
This is a fascinating and important contribution to the thinking about FWS v Scottish Ministers, coming up in the SC next month.
It's quite technical, so here's a shot at a short summary.
Jul 10, 2024 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
A @Waterstones employee tweets "Ooh I'll enjoy tearing your books up and popping them in the bin today" at an author who expresses support for @SEENPublishing. She is promptly sacked.
Is this the first dismissal for gender identity belief?
Well, no. If the essential facts are as above, it's nothing of the sort.
Jun 30, 2024 • 41 tweets • 10 min read
The Legal Feminists have been reading this blog by Melanie Field,@EHRC's former Chief Strategy and Policy Officer linkedin.com/pulse/do-we-ne…
The blog starts with the usual expressions of regret about the "tone" of the debate — and the usual implication (often spelled out, though not here) that both sides are to blame.
Broadly speaking, the protection from discrimination on grounds of the different protected characteristics provided by the EqA is the same.
But the exceptions work very differently, and that reflects what very different kinds of things the PCs are.
Jun 2, 2024 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
McCloud says if FWS win their appeal: "I would be female for some things, like death and marriage, but I would be forced to be treated as male by employers, shops, goods and services".
This is wrong, and obviously so.
independent.co.uk/lgbt/pride-lis…
A GRC deems the holder's sex to have changed for some limited purposes. The words of s.9 of the GRA are wide. ("all purposes"), but that's necessarily confined to those fairly few purposes for which the law distinguishes between male and female; and there are exceptions.
Apr 29, 2024 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Yesterday's thread on Rachel Meade's case concentrated on damages, but the recommendations made against Social Work England and Westminster City Council are also significant.
crowdjustice.com/case/unlawful-…
WCC must train all its managers and HR staff on freedom of expression and protected belief, to include the implications of the EAT judgment in Forstater. It must share full details of that training with Ms Meade, including details of the trainer and any slides, handouts etc.
Apr 28, 2024 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Social worker Rachel Meade has been awarded £40,000 for injury to feelings against @SocialWorkEng and @CityWestminster, aggravated damages against both, and exemplary damages against SWE.
thetimes.co.uk/article/social…
Exemplary damages are awarded to punish conduct that is "oppressive, arbitrary or unconstitutional". They are rare.
Mar 3, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It's important and significant that @HadleyFreeman uses masculine pronouns for Scarlett Blake and Barbie Kardashian in this piece. Well done @thetimes.
thetimes.co.uk/article/indulg…
It's important because the myth that people who assert a trans identity have a legal right to have others "respect" it by using their preferred pronouns has been so widely spread. That's nonsense, but many people believe it.
Dec 30, 2023 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Demands for preferred pronouns and article 8 - a short 🧵
It seems to be widely assumed that a the claim of a trans-identifying person in the workplace to have others compelled to use his or her preferred pronouns is based on article 8.
Dec 29, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
While we're looking back at 2023, our top 10 posts (by number of views) for the year. Some surprises here.
At no.10, with 1,258 views, one of Naomi Cunningham's several posts on "misgendering", this one from July 2021, in which she unpacks the EAT's disclaimers on the subject in Forstater: legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/07/27/mis…
Dec 2, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Excellent thread.
One further point. People sometimes say "proportionality isn't a numbers game", but proportionality is a numbers game. It's literally what the word means. In the discrimination law context, it's not solely a numbers game - but numbers certainly matter.
If you let children self-identify into facilities provided for the opposite sex, that will put girls at a particular disadvantage compared to boys.
Nov 4, 2023 • 30 tweets • 7 min read
A few thoughts on the FWS judgment.
It's disappointing, if not ultimately very surprising, that the Inner House of the Court of Session upheld the ruling of the Outer House that a GRC does change a person's "sex" for the purposes of the EqA.
The court starts its analysis with the now-traditional preliminary obeisances to the sensitivity and difficulty of questions around sex and gender.
Oct 16, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This is an employment tribunal judgment about gender reassignment discrimination. First instance, so of no weight as precedent.
But quite interesting all the same for its treatment of the comparator question.
gov.uk/employment-tri…
A comparator, it will be recalled, operates as the "experimental control" in a thought experiment. Was the protected characteristic the reason for the treatment? Well, would someone who was the same as the claimant in every respect *except* the protected characteristic...
Sep 6, 2023 • 27 tweets • 9 min read
The Legal Feminists have been reading CIPD's "Transgender and non-binary inclusion" guide.
They say they consulted "a broad range of stakeholders" - some with transgender and non-binary "lived experience". (We wonder, in passing, what other kind of experience there might be.)
