Legally this is not a “trans rights issue” it’s a “sex rights issue”. A blog about boxes

The discussion on reform of the GRA isn’t about protection from discrimination – it’s about who comes within the classes of ‘men’ and ‘women in the Equality Act 2010.

The way the issue is portrayed by lobbyists, most politicians, many corporates and the media, is legally wrong.

The “trans rights debate”, in terms of equality law, isn’t about rights for trans people not to be discriminated against or harassed unlawfully because they are trans. Properly, that right is already contained in Section 7of the Equality Act 2010, under the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” and covers people, anywhere along the “transition” route whether they have had surgery, hormones or not, and whether they even progress down that route or not. I have taken, and will, no doubt continue to take, claims about discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment, regardless of what other possible legal changes occur around the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (more of that later).

No, this is, in law, a sex-based rights argument about who comes within the class of men or women in Section 11 of the Equality Act. 

But let me go back a bit. To truly understand the Equality Act 2010, you need to understand about protected characteristics, contexts and comparators. The Equality Act is complicated. It has a lot of common principles and then a lot of exceptions to make the Act workable and deal with specific needs and contexts.

Protected Characteristics (the boxes)

There are nine protected characteristics or classes (PCs). They are sex, race, religion and belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, disability, age, pregnancy and maternity, and marriage and civil partnership.

Each PC is defined in Sections 5-12 (plus 17 and 18) of the Equality Act. The protected characteristics are essentially each a legal box. To be able to bring a claim, you must first show you fit into that box legally by meeting the relevant definition in the box; whether it is the disability box, the age box or the sex box etc. 

All of us fit into several of these boxes, but in law you need to show, by evidence if challenged, how you fit into the box under which you are claiming protection. So, for disability discrimination you show how you are disabled. For religion and belief, you show how you meet the relevant test for religion or non-religious belief. This preliminary jurisdictional point on whether gender identity theory (or the non-belief in it) was a protected belief was the subject of the well-known Forstater case, now under appeal.

Some boxes have also sub-dividers which I will call sub-boxes; so for sex, are you a man or a woman? For sexual orientation whether you are sexually attracted to people of the same sex, opposite sex or persons of either sex? And so on.

These sub-boxes are important for comparators, which I will explain later.

Each protected characteristic pleaded must be considered separately as the newly elected Conservative Government, which came in just as the Equality Act was passed, never enacted a clause contained in the Equality Act which would have allowed for cases on combined discrimination grounds. 

Comparators

The next aspect you need to understand are comparators. For some types of discrimination, you must show evidence of what the act or decision caused to happen to you by reference to the comparative treatment of another very similar person who doesn’t share your PC. 

You must provide evidence regarding that other person; they will often be a real person who is in same situation but not sharing your PC (ie your box or sub-box). If there is no one to compare yourself to, you can ask the court to use a hypothetical comparator. So, a woman who claims direct sex discrimination will have to show evidence she was treated less favourably than a man – either by comparison to a real man or by comparison to how a man would have been treated in the same situation.

Importantly you cannot use someone of your own box or sub box as a comparator. So, if a woman is discriminated against compared to another woman that is not unlawful direct sex discrimination. The comparator needs to be a legal man. And this is true of other characteristics. So, someone who is sexually attracted to the same sex is compared to someone who is not attracted to the same sex.

How terms like sex are defined and in which sub box you fall is key to success or failure to even starting a discrimination claim.

Types of Discrimination, Contexts and Exceptions

There are different types of unlawful discrimination. They are direct (s13) indirect (s19), harassment (s26) victimisation s27); pregnancy and maternity discrimination (s17 and 18); discrimination arising from disability (s15) and failure to make reasonable adjustments (ss20-21).

The context of discrimination is important. If you cannot fit into any context covered by the Equality Act, you cannot bring a claim under this Act. For example, if a random person in the street racially abuses you, you cannot bring a claim under the Equality Act against them. It might be a hate crime, but this is dealt with under criminal law and not the Equality Act. Some acts (e.g. racist assault at work) may be both a claim under the Equality Act and a hate crime and dealt with very differently.

Practically all of the Equality Act is about civil, not criminal, matters. Primarily, any alleged breach is dealt with by civil action taken in the County Court, Employment Tribunal or First Tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal) depending on issues. (There are separate issues arising from the Public Sector Equality Duty and the possibility of judicial review, which are beyond the scope of this article).

Finally, and importantly, there are many, many exceptions in the Equality Act which are designed to make it workable.

How to analyse a discrimination claim?

To show how I would analyse possible discrimination, these are the steps I would take if a client was asking for advice about a possible unlawful discriminatory act.

  1. What is the protected characteristic my client is relying upon?

For illustrative purposes for this blog, I will look initially through a sex-based lens to show how the Act is defined; but it is important to consider possible conflict with others protected classes’ rights

Does the issue relate to PC of sex? The Act defines sex as 

“11. Sex

In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—

(a)a reference to a person who has a protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;

(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.”

Man and woman are both defined in s212(1), 

“man” means a male of any age;

“woman” means a female of any age.

The Conflict With Competing Trans Rights

And this is where the conflict with competing trans rights occurs. It is essentially a dispute over which sex sub-box someone is determined by law to occupy for the purposes of sex discrimination and harassment.

This is not about the majority of trans people, who self-identify. In current law, self-identifying trans people retain their birth sex when the issue of sex discrimination arises. So, for example, a self-identified transwoman who is harassed at work would typically claim on the basis of her PC of gender reassignment, rather than a sex discrimination claim. 

Legally, as well as all those who were born and “live” in their particular sex sub box of man and women there is the issue of some of the c5000 trans people currently holding Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC) in the UK. 

Under Section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA), holding a GRC “changes” the person’s gender. But the statute is very badly worded and conflates sex and gender, when it actually means legal sex. The effect of s9 (1) of the GRA is to move a person from one sex sub box to the other.

Section 9(1) says that this is “for all purposes,” but in fact s9(3) then goes on to qualify the principle by making it subject to “provision made by this Act or any other enactment”. So, essentially this change is limited by what this and other Acts say, meaning that one can still in some circumstances distinguish biological and legal sex for some purposes. As I say, badly worded. Is it also worth commenting that subsequent statutes have not made clear when s.9(1) GRA does or does not apply.

So, this change of sub-box only applies currently to those with GRCs. However, many people, for reasons unrelated to the Equality Act, want to change this process.

All of the political, rather than legal, arguments are about whether this GRC process should have any element of “gatekeeping” (the steps in the GRA needed to obtain a GRC) or whether the process should just rely on statutory declaration so that anyone could just change their sub-box.

So much of the wider public discussion seem only to be about the impact on trans people of changing or not changing the GRC process, rather than on anyone else, whom they either ignore or dismiss as reactionary bigots. 

However, as a discrimination solicitor, what I find more worrying is that there has been little or no discussion about the legal effects of such a change on sex discrimination and comparable issues like equal pay (chapter 3 Equality Act) or reporting on the badly named “gender pay gap” (The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017). Many gender critical feminists are more focussed on the potential impact on single sex exemptions (which I share but won’t focus on here).

I can find very little good analysis even on how many people are estimated to jump from one sex sub-box to the other. Nor on what impact it will have, whether on the existing rights of those in the sub box or what happens if a party to a sex discrimination claim has changed which sex sub box they fall in. It is not even clear how many trans people there are in the UK, with the Government estimate being between 200-500,000. For Equality Act purposes, how many of this demographic are in employment or education? How many use which services? Or, if there is any industry (such as IT small businesses) where there are disproportionately higher numbers of trans people, will that have an effect on sex based equality rights in practice? 

The truth is I don’t know answers to these questions; and I want someone to do the necessary objective research and analysis. 

However, the #NoDebate stance of Stonewall and their allies, which has fuelled no-platforming and complaints about anyone seeking to do academic study deemed by an unseen mob not to follow a pro trans rights line has meant this otherwise normal objective enquiry and legal debate has not happened.

There are a few exceptions. For example this is an article which does attempt to do so and worth reading. But we need more academic studies to look objectively at these issues.

So back to my theoretical client. What is the next issue I have to address?

What type of discrimination is alleged? For example, is it:

“s13. Direct discrimination

(1)A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.”

So, we need to show: 

  1. A comparator (a real person or hypothetical one, drawn from evidence showing what would have been done to a real person) of the comparator class (so if our client is a woman, her comparator is a man)
  1. that the alleged act, happened because of the protected characteristic

Or another example: 

“19. Indirect discrimination

(1)A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if A applies to B a provision, criterion or practice which is discriminatory in relation to a relevant protected characteristic of B’s.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a provision, criterion or practice is discriminatory in relation to a relevant protected characteristic of B’s if—

(a)A applies, or would apply, it to persons with whom B does not share the characteristic,

(b)it puts, or would put, persons with whom B shares the characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared with persons with whom B does not share it,

(c)it puts, or would put, B at that disadvantage, and

(d)A cannot show it to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”

A rule or policy, applied to everyone, applies to this client, which has a disadvantage to some (including this client) because of their PC compared to others; and it cannot be objectively justified. 

In both direct and indirect discrimination there is reference to comparators. So, who the comparator is and which sub box they fall into is a live issue.

Next, what is the context in which this alleged discrimination took place?

The Equality Act only applies in certain contexts including work, some housing, education, some transport, provision of services to the public, some clubs and associations, trade unions, public functions, occupational pensions and insurance. The law is complicated so you cannot assume whether the Act applies or not without careful analysis. Certainly don’t listen to odd voices on Twitter saying it does not apply to you if you are self-employed (as some are covered), a contractor (as sometimes covered), or the alleged discriminator is not your employer (sometimes covered).Finally, and very importantly, does it fall into an exception in the Act? I could write another whole article on exceptions, so will leave it there.

Only after considering the client’s own evidence and jumping through all of these hoops can I say it could be unlawful discrimination. Be warned: at this point, I am yet to see the other side’s evidence which comes out as litigation proceeds, so have to review constantly the strength of the claim. 

So, discrimination claims are legally complex and challenging which is probably why I enjoy this area of law.

Conclusion

Going back to the title of the piece, the current toxic debate about “trans rights” is actually a legal fight about the sex sub boxes and who is legally in which? If someone gets a Gender Recognition Certificate it does now and will impact on whether you can use that person as a comparator. So, changes to the GRA affect sex discrimination laws profoundly. The fact that the “gatekeeping” has kept the numbers low means it has not been an issue to date. There are not huge numbers of sex discrimination claims anyway, so the issue is largely unlitigated, as yet. In addition, the breadth of the definition of gender reassignment in the Equality Act (which does not require surgery or any treatment) means trans people have significant protection against unlawful discrimination just for being them in key areas such as work, education and access to services.

However, if the estimates of numbers of trans people are correct, then thousands or hundreds of thousands may be eligible to apply for a GRC. If the law is changed to allow for self-identification, this would increase the risk of adverse impact on sex based rights in some cases by, in practical terms changing who can and cannot be used as a legal comparator. Some people may not be able to pursue claims for direct or indirect sex discrimination because of it. Yet this change has hardly been discussed, analysed or researched.

This is why we need a proper debate.

Biography

I am a discrimination solicitor who, unusually, puts my head above the parapet on social media. I tweet openly as @AudreySuffolk about my subject. As part of my commitment to public legal education, I give my general opinion where I think people have got rights under equality law. More recently, I’ve done so with regards to the heated gender identity/trans rights versus women’s rights conflict. I tweet politely and try to assume interest and goodwill from those who correspond with me. Sadly, this is seldom replicated by some who engage with me with hostile condemnations (now known to me as the “die in a fire scum TERF” brigade). I believe that people who come under all nine protected classes have equality rights, but sometimes those rights conflict and have to be balanced, in accordance with the principles of UK Equality law

For this, I have been complained about to my employers, to our funders and to our professional network, despite these explicitly being my own thoughts and not necessarily shared. Luckily, all the organisations have shown backbone, but others have not been so fortunate. 

Marriage: When Two Remain Two

Next week, six couples will take the UK government to court arguing that humanist marriage should be recognised in law. At the moment, humanist marriage ceremonies are not legally recognised, meaning that it is necessary for humanist couples either to remain legally unmarried or to have a second civil ceremony.

The legal history of marriage in the UK is interesting. Originally it was available only as a religious ceremony, in which husband and wife became a single legal entity. “When two become one,” sang the Spice Girls, in what was either a cliched reference to sex or an incisive and damning commentary on the persistence of this doctrine.

In one of the first modern legal texts, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England of 1765, a woman was understood to exist either as a femme covert or as a femme sole – a married or an unmarried woman. A femme covert was also said to be in coverture, and the principle of coverture was to establish the legal fiction that a husband and wife were one legal person:

By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage.

As one legal being, the woman could not refuse sexual access to her husband, and he was responsible for her financially, and directed any money or property that had been hers. Furthermore, he was often responsible in law for her actions with a presumption that she acted under his direction; it was this principle that led Dickens’ Mr Bumble to describe the law as “a ass, a idiot,” and to add that “If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor.” Quite. 

However, the principle survived until the surprisingly recent past. The right of women to their own property was first, arriving in 1870 with the Married Women’s Property Act.  The obligation of a woman to provide sexual access to her husband (the entitlement of a man to sexual consent from his wife) was only abolished in the Criminal Justice Act 1994, after the case of R v R [1991] UKHL 12. Until this point it was not legally possible for a man to rape his wife, because as they were one person, he would be seeking consent not from her but from himself. The equivalent common law obligation of a man to provide financial support to his wife was yet more recent, with s.198 Equality Act 2010. An individual of either sex can still not be compelled to testify against their spouse in some criminal cases in England and Wales, and this derives from the same starting point, in that if the spouses are one legal person, the right not to self-incriminate extends to preventing their spouse incriminating them.

Within this model, sex was regarded as part of the contract of marriage, in which sex was an act of labour performed by a woman (wife) in exchange for financial benefit from a man (her husband). The hangover from this model is still alive in rape culture – the belief that expenditure on the part of a male entitles him to sexual access – and in the sale of sexual services.

It is now commonly accepted that sexual consent is not a contractual obligation marked by financial consideration at least as far as marriage goes. The arguments of the last two decades over same sex marriage compelled instead the widespread acceptance that marriage is an arrangement between equals motivated by love. The extension of the idea of a religious marriage to one based on humanist principles, which expressly rest on liberal human values, would underscore that two do not become one, but remain very much two, even in marriage.

Identity, State and Article 8

This is a post about the interplay between a person’s identity, Article 8 ECHR and the role of the state in a person’s identity.

Article 8 is a person’s right to private and family life. It is the most elusive, and most expansive, of the Articles. It reads as follows

Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

In other words, everyone has the right, although the state may interfere with it in certain circumstances if it is justified. Obvious ways where the state may interfere would be in reading text messages from a suspect in a crime, of refusing entry to the UK of a non-British spouse where the visa requirements are not met, or, currently topical, stopping people from leaving their homes without a reasonable excuse. These are all interferences with our private and family lives, but the state has a justifiable reason for doing so.

What IS this right, though? How do you define a person’s “private life?” Many have tried it, but a comprehensive definition slides through the fingers of the deftest jurist. It has been loosely grouped into three subcategories by the Council of Europe’s guide to include (i) a person’s physical, psychological or moral integrity, (ii) her privacy and (iii) her identity and autonomy. 

We know from case law that it is not restricted to a person’s “inner circle.” A person’s private life can rarely be effective within the confines of their own head or their own home; human beings are, as the House of Lords said in Huang v SSHD [2007] UKHL 11, “social animals.” It is not enough that a person has an ethnic identity or a social identity if they are not allowed to express that. Article 8 “secures to individuals a sphere within which they can freely pursue the development and fulfilment of their personality.”

Identities which are protected by Article 8 include national identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, gender identity, parental identity, and others.

The state, however, treads a fine line between lawful respect for a person’s identity and unlawful intrusion on privacy. It is obvious that where the state keeps records of minority identities, that is capable of being used to no good purpose. Hitler’s Germany is the obvious example, but in modern day Kyrgyzstan, to take another, it is the nationalists who campaign to keep ethnic identity on ID cards, not the minorities who know that it would be an invitation to discrimination. Here in the UK, the requirement that defendants state their nationality as part of their identity is reported to create ‘racialised courtrooms’ potentially breaching the UK’s obligations under Article 8 (and 6).

The protection offered by Article 8 to recognise and respect a person’s identity is vital. As state technology, databases and surveillance expand though, we must ensure that privacy is not trampled under the pretext of protecting identity.

Specialist services: permissible discrimination

Twelve years ago, Southall Black Sisters went to court – not, on this occasion to defend a woman from a violent man, but to defend themselves against the loss of funding from Ealing Council.

Ealing had funded SBS since the mid 80s, but in 2007 had decided that domestic violence provision must not be provided to cater to “all individuals irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, race, faith, age, disability, resident within the Borough of Ealing experiencing domestic violence.” This pushed SBS outside the scope of funding, because they provided assistance only to BME women.

Ealing argued that this specialist service amounted essentially to discriminatory practice by SBS, and that proper equality meant a service which also catered to men and to white service users – notwithstanding that such a service would be inaccessible to the very community who needed SBS’s support. At one stage they even suggested that the name “Southall Black Sisters” was unlawful as it announced its audience in its name.

Perhaps recognising that “what about the men” was an unattractive argument, Ealing caved on the second day of the hearing, accepting that specialist service provision from a specialist source was not only lawful, but necessary. Moses LJ summarised with the judgment with the comment “Specialist services for a racial minority from a specialist source is anti-discriminatory and furthers the objectives of equality and cohesion.”

The same could be said for services provided to any other group, such as women, or gay people, and s.30 Schedule 3 Equality Act 2010 expressly permits a service to be restricted to people who share a protected characteristic.

The judgment is worth reading, and can be found here.