But Is It Cricket? Giving Women A Sporting Chance

Lia Thomas, a swimmer, born male, is now routinely winning women’s swimming races in the United States. Soon we are bound to see a similar situation in the UK. Do the female athletes who lose team medals and opportunities in these situations have any legal recourse?

I think they may have. I’m going to consider a hypothetical. 

 I am consulted by Jane, a top female sports woman. She is third best in the country in her sport, which combines speed, strength and skill. Normally this means she makes the big competitions for her home nation, England as there are three places in the team. This year the rules were changed to allow trans women to compete in the women’s competition if they met a requirement to lower testosterone to a certain level for one year. As a result, May, a trans woman, is eligible for a place on the women’s team in Jane’s sport. May matured through male puberty before transition, and was an elite male athlete in the same sport as Jane, and under the new rules is certain to make the top 3.   Jane, as the fourth-placed athlete in this event, will miss out on competing for her country. She feels the rules to be unfair and she will lose out financially and in sporting terms.

I am not in this piece going to discuss the merits of Jane’s view, but how a claim under the Equality Act would be framed. 

I will assume the identity of the organisation she will challenge is clear and her claim is in time. I will also assume the organisation is not a public body so PSED not engaged, but the competition organiser is a provider of services to the public, so Jane can bring her claim in the County Court in England and Wales or the Sheriff Court in Scotland under part 3 of the Equality Act. 

So, with any claim where the problem is a rule (or rule change), the most obvious starting point is indirect discrimination, under s19 Equality Act.

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.

In this case we have a “provision, criterion or practice” of allowing not just biological females into the sport but also MTF trans identifying people who meet certain criteria relating solely to testosterone levels.

The rule applies to all competitors, whatever their protected characteristics. It will be indirectly discriminatory on grounds of sex if it puts the women to whom it is applied at a particular disadvantage compared to the men to whom it is applied; and puts Jane at that disadvantage; and the competition organiser can’t show that it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. 

Does it put Jane, as a biological women, at a particular comparative disadvantage?  It doesn’t have to be all or even most women. I suspect she would point to evidence that she, as with the average biological woman, is likely to have smaller heart, lung capacity, shorter limbs, difference in pelvis, etc than a comparable trans woman who had gone through male puberty. It can even affect only a few women, as long as there is  a causal link to the protected characteristic (this is known as small group disadvantage).

Jane’s argument would presumably be that the difference in performance is so great between the average elite athlete female and the average elite athlete male who has gone through male puberty (even those whose testosterone is lowered) that it makes the rule inherently discriminatory.

So her argument is she is put at that disadvantage.

So then the onus is on the organisation who made or apply the rule to show it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.

Obviously a court would consider all the technical, sociological, scientific evidence for and against such a rule.

Now this is where s 195 of the Equality Act comes in.

In discrimination law, the starting point for any rule generally is no discrimination at all. So one category open for all. However, that would be wholly unworkable. It would mean no Paralympics, no women’s sport or no age-restricted events. So Equality law recognises that it is legitimate to impose some categories to allow groups who would always lose if young, non disabled men could always compete, to limit their events to people of a particular protected class.

S195 Equality Act identifies how one set of categories, relating to sex is permissable:

195 Sport

(1)A person does not contravene this Act, so far as relating to sex, only by doing anything in relation to the participation of another as a competitor in a gender-affected activity.

(2)A person does not contravene section 29, 33, 34 or 35, so far as relating to gender reassignment, only by doing anything in relation to the participation of a transsexual person as a competitor in a gender-affected activity if it is necessary to do so to secure in relation to the activity—

(a)fair competition, or

(b)the safety of competitors.

(3)A gender-affected activity is a sport, game or other activity of a competitive nature in circumstances in which the physical strength, stamina or physique of average persons of one sex would put them at a disadvantage compared to average persons of the other sex as competitors in events involving the activity.

Ignore the reference to gender, technically they mean sex.

Whilst this, on the face of it look permissive, when considered within the context of an indirect sex discrimination claim, it could be a part of the duty not to indirectly discriminate against biological women.  It relates to the issue of whether the rule is determined as “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. The onus is on the sports body to show that it is.

The fact that s195 is written into the Equality Act is a strong indication by Parliament that use of such an exception is not only okay but could be necessary to achieve fair competition. Consideration of why the sports organisation did or didn’t use the exception(by reference to strong evidence from consultation, research and analysis from all potentially affected people) will be key.

I cannot predict how any particular claim might be resolved (though studying the recent World Rugby process  here for determining categories is instructive). But given that women’s sport has for the first time started to be commercially important, it is very likely that a claim for indirect sex discrimination will be made soon.

Admission to women-only spaces, and “case by case” assessment

The current EHRC Code of Practice on ‘Services, public functions and associations’ says that whether or not any given trans-identifying man should be admitted to a women-only space is something that should be decided on a “case-by-case” basis, and it has been argued in court that this is what the law requires. It sounds quite reasonable, in the abstract: people should make nuanced decisions tailored to the individual circumstances, rather than blindly following blanket rules. What’s not to like about that?

The Equality Act 2010 isn’t as clear as it might be on this question – and as a result, the forthcoming EHRC guidance is eagerly anticipated. While we wait for that, I want to walk through how “case by case” might work in practice. I’ll take one everyday example, a gym. 

I want to think about Louise. Louise is a 25-year-old gym employee, sometimes running fitness classes and sometimes doing a stint on reception. She has an industry-recognised Level 3 qualification in Personal Training. She’s a keen competitive windsurfer, and she plays for a local women’s rugby team. 

One day Jill, a trans-identifying male arrives at the gym to take out membership. Jill is wearing make-up and women’s clothes, but has a deep voice and a hint of stubble, and is obviously male. After completing membership formalities, Jill says “You may be able to tell I’m trans. I assume there’s no objection if I use the women’s changing room?” The women’s changing room has a main space with pegs along the walls, communal showers, and a wall of lockers; and a few curtained cubicles for women who want more privacy. Most users change in the main space. 

What’s Louise to do? What are the criteria on which she should decide whether Jill should be allowed to use the women’s changing room? Should she ask whether Jill has a GRC? Or what treatment Jill has had – hormone treatment, or surgery? Or should she treat that as intensely personal information that she can’t possibly ask about? But if so – how else is she to decide? Is she supposed to make an assessment of how successfully Jill “passes” as a woman? Or perhaps how much effort Jill has made to “pass”? Is she supposed to try to guess how likely it is that other users of the changing room will realise that Jill is male? Is her decision just about Jill, or should she also take into account considerations about the demographics of the gym’s membership – how many of the gym’s female users are middle-aged, or members of religious faiths in which modesty is particularly important? Is she supposed to be able to make this assessment on the fly, or should she ask Jill to come back another day after she’s had a chance to consider all the relevant circumstances and ask for any evidence and conduct any follow-up investigations she thinks necessary? And once Louise has made her assessment, are all the other receptionists supposed to abide by it – or do they have to do their own assessment each time Jill visits the gym? Is the “case” in question Jill, or this particular visit by Jill on this particular occasion?

Suppose Louise agrees that it’s ok for Jill to use the women’s changing room. Suppose Richard, who’s been a member of the gym for some years, overhears the exchange and says “Oh! I didn’t know that was allowed. I’m a woman too, actually, so I assume it’s also ok for me to use the women’s changing room?” Richard is dressed – as usual – in male business attire; he pops into the gym in his lunch-hour from the bank over the road where he works. 

Now what? If Louise says yes to Jill but no to Richard, why’s that? Is it because she knows Richard, and has always known him as a man? Is it because Richard is dressed as a man, and is making no effort at all to “pass” as a woman? Should her decision be different if Richard confides in her that he has already transitioned in his home life, and his real name is Madeleine, but he’s still trying to get up his nerve to transition at work; but because he is really a woman – even though presenting as male for work purposes – he should be allowed to use the women’s facilities? Or suppose Richard says he’s genderfluid, and sometimes comes to work in “girl mode” – and asks if it’s ok for him to use the women’s changing rooms on those days? 

It’s obvious – surely – that it’s not fair to put Louise in this position. She can’t be expected to make a “case by case” assessment. That conclusion doesn’t depend on any particular assumptions about her level of education: it’s  no different if she’s working part-time in the gym while she completes her PhD in gender studies. 

So now suppose you’re the gym owner – or if the gym’s part of a big chain, the chain’s general counsel. Louise is still at the sharp end of this: you’ve got to decide how to help her out. What policy are you going to tell her to follow? Are you going to take the decision out of her hands and give it to someone more senior? You could ask trans customers to fill in a form explaining their particular circumstances, and making a case for why they should be allowed to use the facilities provided for the opposite sex. You could ask them to provide evidence; maybe a copy of their GRC; a GP report; testimonials from friends or relatives. And then a manager could make the “case by case” decision on the basis of that information. 

Good luck with that. Your trans customers will complain – with some justice – that the process is slow, humiliating and intrusive. They may object to being asked to produce documentation that other customers don’t have to produce – they may say you have no right even to ask whether they have a GRC. You don’t ask your other customers to fill in a lot of paperwork to explain why they should be allowed to use the facilities they want to use. 

It’s not going to work, is it? Once you go to the trouble of imagining the practicalities on the ground of a “case by case” approach, you can see what an impossible thicket of difficulty it presents.

You can run a parallel thought experiment with any other single-sex space you care to think of: the practicalities of attempting a “case by case” assessment don’t get any easier. In some cases they get harder.  If it’s admission to a women’s refuge in the middle of the night, then necessarily the decision is urgent and has to be made in a hurry – and the consequences for other traumatised users of the service are more serious if you get it wrong. In a gym, some of your female users may simply self-exclude if you let males use the female changing rooms. That’s bad enough – a service they value and that is good for them is effectively put out of their reach. But female inmates in prison don’t have the luxury of being able to vote with their feet: if your case by case assessment admits a trans-identifying male, you may be exposing them to chronic fear for the duration of their sentence. If it’s the ladies’ toilets at the nightclub, there isn’t even any plausible moment in the “customer journey” at which a case by case assessment might be made. 

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. What you need at your gym is women’s facilities, for women only, with no exceptions; men’s facilities, for men only, with no exceptions; and a sufficient number of single-user changing rooms for anyone who for whatever reason – and no-one need inquire what that reason is – isn’t comfortable using the facilities provided for their sex. That way no-one is excluded, no-one is asked intrusive questions – but also, no naked or half-dressed woman will be surprised by the unwelcome presence of a man. Everyone can get changed in peace. 

Note: not all the LFs are comfortable with the use of male pronouns for even a hypothetical a trans-identifying male. But they haven’t censored this blog, because we don’t all agree on everything, and we value dissent.

If I were Ruler of the World….(part 1)

On twitter, after a period of great exasperation I wrote a thread that started: “I am coming to the view that, if or when I am ruler of the world, anyone who wants to speak about UK Equality[1] law matters on social media has to first sit an exam which I will set.”

I then set out a list of six questions to be answered, in this mythical situation.  Then I promised to provide suggested answers, so here goes with answers 1 and 2 (I will answer the others in later blogs):

1.  What are the nine protected characteristics?

In the Equality Act 2010, nine characteristics were identified as ‘protected characteristics’. These are the characteristics where evidence shows there is still significant discrimination in employment, provision of goods and services and access to services such as education and health. They are:

age;

disability;

gender reassignment;

marriage and civil partnership;

pregnancy and maternity;

race;

religion or belief;

sex;

sexual orientation.

They are then defined in ss5-12 and 17 and 18 of the Act.

It was pointed out by my good friend, lawyer Jo Chimes that, as I mentioned UK, there is a 10th in Northern Ireland, namely political opinion (see The Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998).

So, if you want to bring a claim under the Equality Act you have to show how the conduct complained was linked to one of the protected characteristics; and how you are protected by the Act.

2. What are comparators and why are they important?

If you want to show you’ve suffered unlawful discrimination or bring an equal pay claim, you need to compare your treatment with the treatment of someone else who doesn’t have the same protected characteristic as you. The Equality Act calls this person a “comparator”.

So, a women arguing she was overlooked for a payrise because of sex discrimination would need a man as a comparator. If arguing it was because of her race, it would need to be someone not of her race and so on. You cannot use someone who shares your protected characteristic as a comparator.

In direct discrimination claims (s13), you have to show evidence of less favourable treatment (because of a protected characteristic) than a valid comparator. The comparator can be a real person, similar in all material circumstances but who doesn’t share your PC, or a hypothetical comparator (a thought experiment based on what it is likely to have happened in the same situation if there was a real comparator). Lawyers in these cases can spend considerable time arguing about what is a valid hypothetical comparator for the particular circumstances.

In Chapter 3 of the Act, equal pay claims require a real comparator; so a hypothetical comparator is not allowed. There is some concern that if gender (actually sex) self ID is introduced, this could defeat an otherwise valid, individual equal pay claim.

In indirect discrimination claims (s19 ) and duty to do reasonable adjustments (s20), comparators are also required but in a way too complex for this introductory exam.

So, those are my suggested answers. Will post parts two and three, when I get some time.

[1] [1] Ive correct my spelling mistake from the original

The new interim version of the Equal Treatment Bench Book:

A significant step forward in its guidance on ‘Trans People’, but a long way still to go

A Guest Blog By Maureen OHara. She is a legal academic and former solicitor, who is doing research into the impact on women’s rights of the adoption of gender identity theory by criminal justice agencies

In December 2021 a new interim version of the Judicial College’s Equal Treatment Bench Book (ETBB) was published. Its guidance on ‘Trans People’ in chapter 12 includes significant amendments which take account of some of the criticisms of earlier versions made by gender critical feminists and lawyers.

These criticisms relate to broadly four areas, which are compulsion in relation to the use of the preferred pronouns and modes of address of trans-identifying parties to court proceedings; the adoption of tenets of gender identity theory as if they were fact; the implementation of self- definition of ‘gender identity’ in court proceedings; and the lack of transparency about who contributes to the ETBB’s content. Some of these criticisms have been partially addressed in the new version of the ETBB, while others have not.

In August 2021 a group of practising lawyers and legal academics wrote to the Lord Chief Justice expressing concerns about the previous ETBB guidance. The Lord Chief Justice passed our letter to the ETBB’s Editorial Panel for consideration. The text of the letter set out below. Some signatories’ names have been removed because they did not want them made public.

The revised version of the ETBB has taken on board some of the concerns the letter raised, particularly in relation to the treatment of witnesses giving evidence about their experiences of sexual and domestic violence.

In relation to the use of preferred pronouns, the previous version of the ETBB, published in February 2021, stated:

‘‘It is important to respect a person’s gender identity by using appropriate terms of address, names and pronouns. Everyone is entitled to respect for their gender identity, private life and personal dignity.’’ (p. 325)

Neither the February 2021 version of the ETBB nor previous versions which included this requirement, provided any guidance about how it should be implemented in practice in relation to witnesses other than those who identify as transgender, or about how judges should treat witnesses who perceive defendants in terms of their sex rather than their ‘gender identity’.

Some judges interpreted the guidance as requiring them to compel witnesses to use the preferred pronouns of defendants and other parties to proceedings who identify as transgender. This had particularly serious implications for witnesses who were giving evidence about traumatic events, such as being subjected to physical and sexual violence. Previous versions of ETBB did not address the impact on these witnesses of being required to describe a defendant in criminal proceedings, or an alleged perpetrator of domestic abuse in family proceedings, in ways which amount to a denial of their own perceptions of reality. The potential impact of the earlier guidance on complainants in criminal trials is discussed in this journal article which I wrote in 2019.

This account of being instructed by a judge to use a defendant’s preferred pronouns was given by Maria MacLachlan, who was assaulted in 2017. One of her attackers, Tara Wolf, who self-defined as a ‘trans woman’, was convicted of assault by beating in April 2018.

The revised ETBB recognises for the first time that witnesses have a right to refer to trans-identifying people using pronouns which align with their biological sex, and acknowledges that there may be circumstances where this is required by the interests of justice.

Paragraph 26 of chapter 12 states,

“There may be situations where the rights of a witness to refer to a trans person by pronouns matching their gender assigned at birth, or to otherwise reveal a person’s trans status, clash with the trans person’s right to privacy. It is important to identify such potential difficulties in advance, preferably at a case management [1] stage, but otherwise at the outset of the hearing. A decision would then have to be made regarding how to proceed, bearing in mind factors such as:

…Why the witness is unwilling or unable to give evidence in a way which maintains the trans person’s privacy. For example, a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence at the hands of a trans person may understandably describe the alleged perpetrator and use pronouns consistent with their gender assigned at birth because that is in accordance with the victim’s experience and perception of the events. Artificial steps such as requiring a victim to modify his/her language to disguise this risks interfering with his/her ability to give evidence of a traumatic event.”

There will be occasions when, after these and other relevant factors have been considered, the interests of justice require that a witness or party may refer to the trans person using their former pronouns or name.”

The guidance then cites the provisions relating to special measures for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses contained in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 and Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Previous versions of chapter 12 of the ETBB have not mentioned provisions relating to these groups of witnesses.

This amendment should mean that complainants giving evidence in trials for rape or other sexual offences will not be required to call male defendants ‘she’, and that women giving evidence in family proceedings about their experiences of domestic abuse will not be required to refer to their former male partners as though they were women.

The use of the language of rights in the amendment is significant. While this is an important step forward, many of the problems raised by the ETBB’s general guidance about the use of preferred pronouns are still not addressed in the new version. In practice witnesses’ ability to exercise their right to use pronouns which align with the sex of trans-identified parties to proceedings will be limited by the fact that the ETBB is likely to be interpreted to mean that the judge, the lawyers representing all parties in the proceedings, and perhaps other witnesses, should use preferred pronouns based on self-defined ’gender identity’. The ETBB does not discuss the implications for a witness of calling a trans-identified male ‘he’ while everyone else who speaks in the court room calls that person ‘she’. Where this happens it is likely to confuse and unnerve the witness, who may feel pressurised to use preferred pronouns themselves. This experience is likely to be particularly confusing and distressing for child witnesses and witnesses with learning disabilities.

In criminal proceedings this problem is likely to be compounded in cases where witnesses have already experienced the local police service and the Crown Prosecution Service referring to trans- identified defendants according to their ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex. Research carried out in 2019 by Fair Play for Women found that sixteen police services in England and Wales recorded the sex of suspects and offenders based on self-defined gender. Eight services confirmed in answer to a specific question relating to the offence of rape that they would record the sex of a rape suspect who identifies as transgender as female. In October 2021 it was reported that the Home Secretary intended to end these practices. Whether this will happen remains to be seen. The Crown Prosecution Service also operates a policy of recording the self-defined ‘gender’ of defendants.

In most respects the ETBB guidance makes no distinctions between people who identify as transgender who have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate which changes their ‘gender’ in law, and those who have not. It has effectively introduced self-definition of ‘gender identity’ into the conduct of court proceedings, despite the fact that self-definition is not aligned with current law. This has not changed in the new guidance.

Another criticism of the previous ETBB was that it was partisan and adopted many of the tenets of gender identity theory as if they were matters of fact rather than opinion. This is discussed in depth in a Policy Exchange publication written in 2021 by Thomas Chacko, who also discusses the approach to self-identification in some detail.

The revised version of the ETBB continues to use language founded in gender identity theory which is widely contested, such as ‘gender assigned at birth’. Arguably, its overall approach remains imbued with gender identity theory, on which the implementation of self-definition of ‘gender identity’ is based.

The revised edition has clearly been influenced by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) judgment in Forstater https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60c1cce1d3bf7f4bd9814e39/Maya_Forstater_v_CGD_Europe_and_others_UKEAT0105_20_JOJ.pdf v CGD Europe and Ors(2021) in which it was held that gender critical beliefs are protected beliefs under the Equality Act 2010. It is somewhat more even-handed than previous editions, in that it gives a brief explanation of gender-critical beliefs, notes that they are protected, and acknowledges for the first time that there is a debate in this area. However, the ETBB’s framing of the Forstaterjudgment arguably expresses implicit bias.

While it notes that gender critical beliefs are protected, the revised edition does not explicitly state that this is the result of the decision in Forstater, except in its Appendix on the Equality Act. Its only clear reference to the judgment in Forstaterin chapter 12 relates to what the EAT said about ‘misgendering’.

At paragraph 78, the new ETBB states,

“‘Gender-critical’ is a phrase which, broadly speaking, refers to a belief that sex is immutable and binary, and that people cannot transition. Very often it is linked to concerns that allowing the definition of women to include trans women would make the concept of ‘women’ meaningless and undermine protection for vulnerable women and girls. There is also often concern about what is seen as potential encroachment into ‘safe spaces’. Feelings can run very strongly on both sides of this debate. Clearly the ETBB takes no sides on this matter. The ETBB’s concern is simply that judges have some understanding of the perspectives of the variety of litigants and witnesses who appear before them. Gender-critical beliefs (as long as they do not propose for example to destroy the rights of trans people) are protected beliefs even if they might offend or upset trans people (and others). However, holding a belief is different from behaviour. As explained in the well-publicised Forstater case, ‘misgendering’ a trans person on a particular occasion, gratuitously or otherwise, can amount to unlawful harassment in arenas covered by the Equality Act 2010.”

The ETBB omits to note that the EAT reiterated that the position at common law as established in Corbett v Corbett (orse Ashley)[1971] P 83 is that sex is immutable (para.115), and that the Tribunal also stated that,

“…it is relevant to note, and it was not in dispute before us, that the Claimant’s belief is shared by many others.” (para.52)

Forstater is a landmark case in relation to the protection of gender critical beliefs which has significant implications for the treatment of witnesses who are gender critical or who do not share what the EAT in Forstatercalled “gender identity belief” (para.108). Given the significances of this case, a more neutral summary of the EAT’s judgment, and an exploration of its implications in relation to judicial attempts to require witnesses to use the preferred pronouns and modes of address of trans-identified parties in court proceedings, might have been expected.

The ETBB’s introduction of de factoself-definition of ‘gender identity’ happened without public consultation, and the process by which the ETBB guidance is developed is not open to public scrutiny. Melanie Newman reported in the Law Society Gazette in 2020 that the Judicial College had refused to identify the external organisations involved in training and policy formulation in relation to the ETBB. The Judicial College takes the view that it holds information about judicial training on behalf of the judiciary, and therefore this information is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Such lack of transparency creates an environment which is vulnerable to policy capture.

The fact that the Panel has considered our letter to the Lord Chief Justice and taken some of its concerns into account is an encouraging sign of increasing openness to a wider range of opinion. Perhaps there is hope that before the next edition of the guidance the Judicial College will develop a more transparent process for producing it.

Letter to the Lord Chief Justice

The Right Honourable

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London

WC2A 2LL

27th August 2021

Dear Lord Chief Justice,

The Judicial College’s Equal Treatment Bench Book

We are a group of practising lawyers and legal academics. We are writing in a personal capacity to express our concerns about the implications for witnesses in both criminal and civil proceedings of the guidance on ‘Trans People’ in chapter 12 of the Judicial College’s Equal Treatment Bench Book.

Judges are interpreting this guidance as requiring them to compel witnesses to use the preferred pronouns of defendants who identify as transgender. We are particularly concerned about the implications of this guidance for adult and child complainants at criminal trials relating to violent and sexual offence, and for parties in family proceedings who are giving evidence about their experiences of domestic abuse.

The Bench Book states,

‘‘It is important to respect a person’s gender identity by using appropriate terms of address, names and pronouns.’’ (page 325)

No guidance is given about how this requirement should be carried out in practice in relation to witnesses other than those who identify as transgender, or about how judges should treat witnesses who perceive defendants in terms of their sex rather than their ‘‘gender identity’’. The guidance is written as if the use of a defendant’s preferred pronouns is simply a neutral administrative matter which will have no detrimental effects on witnesses, or on court proceedings.

This has particularly serious implications for witnesses who are giving evidence about traumatic events, such as being subjected to physical and sexual violence. The Bench Book guidance does not address the impact on these witnesses of being required to describe a defendant in criminal proceedings, or an alleged perpetrator of domestic abuse in family proceedings, in ways which amount to a denial of their own perceptions of reality. This is despite the fact that special measures which recognise the particular difficulties which these witnesses may face in giving evidence at court are provided in section 16 and 17 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 in relation to criminal proceedings, and in sections 63 and 64 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 in relation to victims of domestic abuse giving evidence in family and other civil proceedings.

The account below was given by Maria MacLachlan, who was assaulted in 2017. One of her attackers, Tara Wolf, who self-defines as a ‘trans woman’, was convicted of assault by beating in April 2018. MacLachlan has stated:

‘‘My experience of court was much worse than the assault…I was asked ‘‘as a matter of courtesy’’ to refer to my assailant as either ‘‘she’’ or the ‘‘defendant’’. I have never been able to think of any of my assailants as women because, at the time of the assault, they all looked and behaved very much like men and I had no idea any of them identified as women… I tried to refer to him as the ‘‘the defendant’’ but using a noun instead of a pronoun is an unnatural way to speak. It was while I was having to relive the assault and answer questions about it while watching it on video that I skipped back to using ‘‘he’’ and earned a rebuke from the judge. I responded that I thought of the defendant ‘‘who is male, as a male’’. The judge never explained why I was expected to be courteous to the person who had assaulted me or why I wasn’t allowed to narrate what had happened from my own perspective, given that I was under oath.’’ (Julie Moss, ‘Interview: Maria MacLachlan on the GRA and the aftermath of her assault at Speakers’ Corner’, Feminist Current, 21 June 2018, https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/06/21/interview-maria-maclauchlan-gra-aftermath-assault- speakers-corner/)

The authors of the Bench Bookappear not to have considered the inter-action between its guidance and guidance in Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings(ABE). ABE states that judges have a responsibility to ensure that all witnesses are enabled to give their best evidence, and that that they must strike a balance under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights between protecting the defendant’s right to a fair trial and ensuring that witnesses are enabled to give evidence to the best of their ability. It requires judges to “…have regard to the reasonable interests of witnesses, particularly those who are in court to give distressing evidence, as they are entitled to be protected from avoidable distress in doing so.’’ (p.134)

The logic of the Bench Bookguidance is that a complainant in a rape trial can be required to call a defendant who has raped her (or him) ‘‘she’’, and to use female possessive pronouns to refer to the defendant’s body parts. This could also apply to child witnesses and vulnerable adult witnesses. The guidance does not consider how a child or an adult with learning disabilities might experience an instruction from an authority figure like a judge to refer to a biological male as ‘‘she’’. The right to accurately describe the sex of those who have assaulted them is crucially important to the ability of victims of violent and sexual offences to report violence and give evidence at court. Compelling witnesses to describe a defendant in ways which amount to a denial of their own perceptions of reality therefore undermines access to justice.

The use of pronouns and forms of address which reflect a person’s ‘gender identity’ rather than their sex is not simply a matter of social courtesy. For many people it is an expression of a political belief with which they profoundly disagree, and which they consider to be harmful to the rights of women, and to society as a whole. The Bench Bookguidance is effectively promoting the imposition of a form of compelled speech, which is an infringement of witnesses’ rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom of expression, under articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights respectively. Both these articles protect the right not to be obliged to manifest beliefs that one does not hold, as stated in the case of Lee v Ashers Baking Co[2018] UKSC 49. The right not to be compelled to express a political belief is well established in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

The courts have an obligation to balance the rights of defendants and witnesses in criminal trials, and to balance the rights of parties to civil proceedings. However, the Bench Book guidance prioritises the wishes and feelings of those who identify as transgender and includes no guidance for judges about balancing rights. The use of this guidance potentially impedes witnesses’ ability to give accurate and coherent evidence, particularly where giving evidence requires them to recall traumatic events. This cannot reasonably be said to be a proportionate means of achieving the Bench Book’sstated aims, and therefore its interference with witnesses’ Convention rights is not justified.

The Bench Bookguidance appears to be founded on what the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Forstater v CGD Europe and others(UKEAT/0105/20/JOJ) described as ‘gender identity belief’ (paragraph 108). This is the belief that ‘’everyone has a gender identity which may be different to their sex at birth and which effectively trumps sex so that trans men are men and transwomen are women’’ (paragraph 107). The Tribunal found that the Claimant’s lack of ‘gender identity belief’ was protected under Article 9 (1) ECHR and therefore within section 10 Equality Act 2010; as was her ‘gender-critical belief’, the core of which is that sex is biologically immutable (paragraphs 14 and 15). The Tribunal noted that this belief is in accordance with the current law (paragraph 115), and is shared by many people (paragraph 52).

The Bench Bookguidance is not aligned with the Gender Recognition Act’s provisions relating to the recognition of ‘gender identity’. It states that,

“It should be possible to recognise a person’s gender identity…for nearly all court and tribunal purposes regardless of whether they have obtained legal recognition of their gender by way of a Gender Recognition Certificate.’’ (page 326)

This effectively introduces self-definition of ‘gender identity’ into the conduct of court proceedings. However, such self-definition has not been incorporated into law in this jurisdiction. Proposals to amend the Gender Recognition Act to incorporate self-definition have been the subject of a public consultation, following which the government decided not to introduce these proposals into law. In advising judges to incorporate self-definition of ‘gender identity’ into the conduct of court proceedings, the Bench Book effectively advises judges to go beyond the law.

The Bench Book’s approach has been introduced without public consultation, and in the absence of any established public consensus. The Law Society Gazette has reported that, when asked to identify the organisations who assisted in the development of this guidance, the Judicial College stated that it was “not in the public interest to make public the names of those involved in this work.’’ (Melanie Newman, ‘Warning over transgender guidance to judges’, The Law Society Gazette, 24 February 2020, https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/warning-over-transgender-guidance-to- judges/5103196.article).

We find this lack of transparency about the influences on such an important document very concerning, particularly as the document is not aligned with current law.

There appears to be increasing concern about the Bench Book’s guidance in this area outside of the legal profession, such that the think tank Policy Exchange has recently published a document written by barrister Thomas Chacko which suggests the guidance is in need of urgent revision. We attach a copy of this publication.

We ask that a review of this guidance be conducted with a view to amending it to ensure that it reflects the law, and that it takes account of the obligation to achieve an appropriate balance between the rights of all witnesses in court proceedings.

Yours sincerely,

Rosemary Auchmuty, Professor of Law

Sue Bruce, Solicitor

Thomas Chacko, Barrister

Naomi Cunningham, Barrister

Peter Daly, Solicitor

Eileen Fingleton, Solicitor

Francis Hoar, Barrister

Belinda Lester, Solicitor

Audrey Ludwig, Solicitor

Helen Nettleship, Barrister

Maureen O’Hara, Senior Lecturer in Law

Peter Ramsay, Professor of Criminal Law

Angela Smith, Solicitor

Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law

[1]  A case management conference (civil law) or hearing (criminal law) is essentially a meeting which takes place before the main court proceedings between the allocated judge and lawyers for the parties, where decisions are made about various aspects of the conduct of the case. 

Sex Matters in the Board Room – a joint Legal Feminist and Sex Matters briefing

You may recall that Legal Feminist responded to the FCA’s recent consultation on diversity on listed company boards LF FCA consultation. The FCA’s proposals would affect all listed companies, not just those in the financial services sector.

We welcome D&I initiatives and are pleased to suggest an alternative to the FCA’s proposals that is consistent with the current law on every footing – Companies Act, Equality Act, Gender Recognition Act and UK GDPR. It would also result in data being reported on a basis consistent with the ONS and other data reporting initiatives.

Legal Feminist has teamed up with Sex Matters to produce a joint briefing for those new to the topic, explaining the issues with the FCA’s proposals and the advantages of our suggested alternative. Although the consultation has closed, there is still time for those in the corporate and finance sectors to make their views known. If you are in those sectors and/or have contacts who would be affected by the FCA’s proposals, please use the Sex Matters emailer to send the briefing to your contacts either in your own name or via Sex Matters.

See here for the Legal Feminist/Sex Matters briefing.

See here for a link to the Sex Matters blog which explains how you can sign up to help distribute the briefing to those who need to read it.

Thank you!

Conversion therapy: the path to good law

This is the text of my talk at the Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum Inaugural Annual Dinner last night (unchanged apart from the addition of some links).

How do we arrive at good law making a new criminal offence? Robin says good law needs legal certainty, clarity, enforceability, practicability. But those all assume an affirmative answer to the prior question – do we need the proposed new law at all? I don’t share that assumption, so I have a rival four things I say we need:  

  • evidence of harm 
  • a convincing case that the harm is amenable to legislation
  • clear proposals 
  • open public debate 

Starting with the last: debate. 

The proposed ban is one aspect of what we can call the “gender wars” where there has been a strong pressure for “no debate”. Those who have tried have been  shouted down, no-platformed, compared to Nazis, and hounded out of their jobs. 

Debate informed by evidence is how we test ideas and proposals: if they’re any good, they’ll stand up to being poked with pointed questions. If they don’t stand up to being poked, they’re no good. This idea underpins our whole profession. 

So this evening’s discussion is an encouraging development. To find the CEO of Stonewall on a platform with me signals a welcome change of heart. Thank you Nancy – we need to have this conversation.

Evidence of harm 

The evidence-base for this proposal is thin. 

The government has made the proposal for law without waiting for Dr Hillary Cass to complete her independent review of gender identity services for young people. Instead it relies on 30 interviews and a review of existing studies by academics at Coventry University. 

The Coventry review admits that for the UK, it only found 2 studies relating to gay conversion therapy, and none on gender identity. 

The consultation also relies on the government’s 2017 LGBT survey where 5% of respondents said they’d been offered conversion therapy, and 2% that they’d received it.  

But if you look at that survey itself, you find this killer line: 

We did not provide a definition of conversion therapy in the survey 

That means:  

  • We don’t know how many of those 2%  were lesbians who were recording social pressure to accept trans-identifying males as potential sexual partners.
  • We don’t know how many were teenagers whose parents or therapists counselled watchful waiting in place of treatment with puberty-blockers. 
  • We don’t know how many were gender non-conforming children whose homophobic parents or peers had suggested to them that they must be trans. 
  • We don’t even know the sex of the respondents, because the survey didn’t ask. 

We don’t have a clue what these responses mean: they’re not evidence of anything. 

The consultation admits that there’s no real evidence of harm. It says: 

While the exact prevalence of conversion therapy is challenging to establish, it is the view of the government that one incident of conversion therapy is too many.

In other words, the government is saying – we just don’t know whether this is a real problem that needs legislation, but we’re going to legislate anyway.

Case for legislation 

Even if there were evidence of harm, not every harm can be put right with legislation; sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. You’d hope a proposal for legislation would address cost and benefit. 

But this consultation doesn’t get to that point. Having failed entirely to identify a credibly-evidenced or even defined kind of harm that is its target, it can’t hope to explain why criminalising it is a good idea – and it doesn’t even try. 

Last element – clear proposal

The government’s core proposal  focuses on children and vulnerable adults, and criminalises a talking therapy delivered 

 with the intention of changing their sexual orientation or changing them to or from being transgender

This muddles two different things. 

Being gay or bisexual isn’t a medical condition. It doesn’t require treatment. We can all agree that practices that try to change people’s sexual orientation are wrong and futile. 

Gender dysphoria sufficiently severe to make you seek radical alterations to your healthy body undoubtedly is a medical condition. There are two clues. The word: dysphoria – profound unease or dissatisfaction. And the demand for medical treatment. 

Let’s run a thought experiment. Say you’re a therapist. You see an unhappy 10-year-old girl. She wears baggy clothes, and has short hair. She says she’s sure she’s a boy really. She hates her developing breasts, and dreads the onset of periods. She despises all things “girly.” 

Your duty as a therapist is clear. You need to get to the bottom of the child’s distress. Is she struggling to come to terms with the beginnings of same-sex attraction in a homophobic environment? Is she traumatised by exposure to porn? Have her parents let slip that they’d have preferred a son? Has she suffered abuse or other trauma? The heart-breaking stories of detransitioners should be enough to make it clear how important it is to let you do that duty carefully and conscientiously. 

The proposed law contains a safeguard for therapists treating people questioning their gender identity. But it won’t help you: this child isn’t questioning, she’s telling you she’s sure. So the government’s proposals threaten to lock you up for doing what your conscience and your professional duty both tell you you must do.

Gender non-conforming children often grow up to be gay adults. The bitter irony of this proposal is that it entrenches the idea that people can escape being gay by changing sex. This is a lie. Everyone in this room knows that it’s impossible for a human being literally to change sex. But the attempt will exact a terrible price in painful surgeries, loss of sexual function, sterility, and other complications. 

This is the most savage conversion therapy ever invented.

It’s homophobia that creates the conditions for this conversion therapy: homophobia that tells gay children they are defective. Many of us here grew up in a profoundly homophobic society. Clause 28 was passed in 1988, when I was 22 and my elder brother was 23. My brother was gay. He killed himself on 13 January 1989. I believe that he died, in part, from the toxic effects of homophobia. Those problems of homophobic bullying haven’t gone away. There is  still work to be done, and this is Stonewall’s proper mission.

Conclusion: the Denton’s playbook 

In 2019, law firm Dentons and others published a guide to campaigning strategy for gender self ID. The report says:

In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.

Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth, p.20

That is exactly what we see here. This is a proposal to criminalise something everyone agrees is bad – gay conversion therapy – but to use that as a veil of protection whose real purpose is to criminalise what should be routine  responsible therapeutic work. 

This is fundamentally dishonest. It is certainly not the path to good law. 

Legal Feminist responds to FCA consultations

Legal Feminist has responded both to the FCA consultation on diversity & inclusion in listed company boardrooms and to a joint Discussion Paper of the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the FCA on diversity in the financial services sector. In both cases, while we applaud the intention behind the proposals, and are strong proponents of data-driven policy-making, we felt that the way in which those intentions were to be reflected in rules and policy rendered the proposals at best ineffective and at worst dangerous.

Remarkably, the FCA’s proposals on “gender” reporting failed to disclose relevant conflicts of interest (Stonewall) and made no reference to existing legislation that already requires many listed companies to report their board composition by sex (take a bow, drafters of section 414C(8) Companies Act 2006).

PDFs of our responses can be found at the end of this blog. Below is the Introduction and Executive Summary of our response to the FCA consultation.

Introduction
Legal Feminist is a collective of practising solicitors and barristers who are interested in feminist analysis of law, and legal analysis of feminism. Between us we have a wide range of specialist areas of law including company law, corporate finance, financial services, employment, data protection and privacy, discrimination and human rights law. Our range of specialisms enables us to consider holistically the issues raised in the Consultation Paper (CP) and our collective experience enables us to comment on the practical implications of some of those issues. As a non-aligned collective of lawyers from a range of backgrounds, we do not represent any particular firm or issuer and are therefore well-placed to give candid feedback on the issues raised by the CP.

We responded to Discussion Paper 21/2 published by the Prudential Regulatory Authority, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). To the extent the DP and CP raise common issues, we may address those issues in the same terms.

As feminists, we generally welcome initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion (D&I) and we thank the FCA for its efforts to drive forward D&I initiatives. We particularly support proposals that seek to gather data to support policy making, provided this is done carefully. However, we recognise that such initiatives engage a range of legal issues and therefore need to be carefully considered by specialists to avoid unintended harm.

As the FCA has no direct responsibility for D&I matters, we are concerned that it does not have access to the particular expertise in international employment, data protection and privacy or human rights law required for a full consideration of the issues raised by the CP. Regretfully, we have formed the view that the proposals outlined in the CP are flawed, perhaps fatally, in view of the difficulty of reconciling them with other laws and regulations in these specialist areas.

Past practice in relation to regulatory intervention in matters of Environmental, Social and Governance has tended towards entrenching rules or policies developed by groups with relevant expertise – for example in relation to the codification in the Listing Rules of recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. We recommend that the FCA consider appointing a working group, comprising stakeholders with a range of expertise and interests, to consider its proposals further. Members of the Legal Feminist collective would be glad to serve on such a working party.

A number of our concerns are relevant to more than one consultation question. Accordingly, we have framed our response as a general discussion of some of these issues, to which we then refer in answers to the specific consultation questions. We have also included an Executive Summary.

Executive summary

The potential consequences of the proposals in the CP include:

  • confusing disclosures in annual reports as a result of the FCA’s failure to take account of the existing mandatory disclosure regime in the Companies Act 2006
  • poor response rate and/or non-standardised disclosures as a result of incompatibility of data collection and reporting with data protection rules of the UK and other jurisdictions
  • individuals with certain protected characteristics being easily identified, giving rise to issues of privacy and even personal safety
  • poor quality disclosures as a result of failure to take account of different ethnicity considerations applicable to global and overseas Issuers
  • poor quality data resulting from failure to collect data on sex on a disaggregated basis
  • difficulty of comparing data to other data sources, such as the UK Census, resulting from self-identification of gender (Self ID)
  • Issuers being exposed to possible discrimination claims from employees as a result of seeking to comply with rules based on Self ID
  • breach of the FCA’s Public Sector Equality Duty set out in the Equality Act 2010 (EqA) through the adoption of Self ID, which is not recognised by the EqA

For the full text of Legal Feminist’s responses to the consultation paper and the discussion paper, download the PDFs below.

LF-response-to-CP-21_24Download
LF response to DP 21/2Download

Two Key Questions

This article is written about women, but it could also apply to men and male only services.

As many readers will already know, the Equality Act 2010 provides for single sex services, and acknowledges that there will be times when it is reasonable for a service to exclude members of the opposite sex (para 27 Schedule 3) or to exclude on the basis of gender reassignment (para 28 Schedule 3). Evidently, it is not likely to be reasonable when someone is running a greengrocers, but it might well be when they are running a refuge or rape crisis centre and need to retain a recovery space that is female only, for example.

Today, the word “terfs” is trending on Twitter. This seems to have been prompted by a combination of factors, one of which is Margaret Atwood’s retweet of an article deemed unacceptable by the self-appointed terf-finder generals. At the time of writing, Atwood has not yet recanted, but did tweet “Read her piece, she’s not a terf” for which she was met with a barrage of comments insisting that the article did indeed bear the devil’s mark of terfery. 

The “not a terf” comment made me wonder: what IS a terf? Is the existing law a terf? And I think it reduces to these two key questions:

  1. Do you think that women and girls should ever have the right to meet or to access services where there is nobody present who was born male?
  2. If the answer to (1) is no, do you think that there is any stage in a male-born person’s proposed or actual transition where access to women’s spaces should be restricted?

Answering yes to one or both of these questions is in line with the existing law in the UK, which provides that single sex spaces are legal and that exclusion is justified where ‘a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’ – and what is proportionate for someone who has decided in their own mind but not yet taken any physical steps at all towards transition, may not be the same as what is proportionate for someone who has socially and medically transitioned years ago.

Yet watching the terfs hashtag on Twitter, it seems that for the purists, the only available answer to either question is no. If you answer yes to either of them, then welcome to the coven – you may be horrified to learn it, but you too are among the terven. The only distance between us is which services should be restricted and how far along in transition a person should be to access them. 

For those who do, honestly, take the position that the answer to both questions must be no: you are advocating the abolition of single sex or separate sex services altogether, and therefore the abolition of some of the protections available on the basis of sex contained in the Equality Act. Anyone who wishes to advance such an extreme position must be able to formulate a cohesive argument in favour of this drastic legal change. “Shut the fuck up, terf” is not one.

How To Reconcile The Seemingly Irreconcilable

This is a talk I gave at the FILIA conference on 17 October 2021. 

I am going to try to explore how to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable principles using an old pre Equality Act (EA) case, largely forgotten except for nerdy enthusiasts like me and many of you.

The two seemingly irreconcilable principles are

1.    Equality law requires us to treat no one less favourably on grounds related to / because of their protected characteristic.  No discrimination or stereotyping based on a person’s protected characteristic. Jobs, services etc should be available to all equally.

Against that

2.    “One size fits all” means that some people, because of their protected characteristic, are either significantly disadvantaged by this or not even able to access a service. So, we sometimes need to discriminate, as it were for the greater good, to ensure this group can access a service. It may not be all or even most of the protected class; it may only be a small sub group – but they are disadvantaged, if everyone is treated exactly the same. 

So how to reconcile this?

Well the 2008 case of Shah and Kaur v Ealing BC (better known as the Southall Black Sisters case) is a really good illustration. 

Whilst it predates the Equality Act 2010, it follows the same principles.

The case concerned Southall Black Sisters, an organisation that provided services to Asian and Afro-Caribbean women particularly in relation to domestic violence. For a while, they received substantial funding from Ealing Council. 

The Council decided in 2007 that it would in future encourage open competition by commissioning services according to agreed criteria. These included that services should be provided to ‘all individuals irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, race, faith, age, disability, resident within the Borough of Ealing experiencing domestic violence’.  A one size fits all approach. 

This requirement meant that SBS would no longer be able to limit their services to Asian and Afro-Caribbean women. They sought a judicial review of this requirement.

It is well worth everyone reading Lord Justice Moses’ judgement in the High Court being short, easy to read and generally excellent.

On the second day of the hearing, Ealing BC conceded that it could not maintain its decision and sought to resist the application no longer. It agreed to continue to fund Southall Black Sisters pending a further fresh decision as to the criteria it would adopt for the commission of services to assist the victims of domestic violence. 

Recently, I met the Chief Exec of SBS Pragna Patel. I was enthusing, like a fangirl, about the case. She said it was she who was adamant they needed a written judgment to set out the legal principles clearly for everyone; and LJ Moses agreed to this.

The statutory basis on which this case was decided was the 1976 Race Relations Act (RRA), which, after the Steven Lawrence inquiry had been amended in 2000. It then included a precursor to what we know as the Public Sector Equality Duty, and was known as the Race Equality Duty.

It required:

“due regard for the need –

(a) to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination, and 

(b) to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups.”

This wording clearly is the basis for s149 Equality Act  

s149 Public sector equality duty (PSED)

(1)A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—

(a)eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;

(b)advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;

(c)foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.”

In this case, no full equality impact assessment was undertaken until some time after these proceedings were launched. Further, the initial decision was predicated on some seriously dodgy use of statistics. Ealing BC observed that the largest proportion of domestic violence in its Borough was suffered by white European women. But that statistic was meaningless and irrational unless compared with the fact that 58 per cent of the female population of Ealing during the same period consisted of white European women. As the documents showed, 28 per cent of domestic violence was suffered by Indian, Pakistani and other Asian women. That statistic is of vital importance when one considered that those groups made up only 8.7 per cent of the population within Ealing. 

In those circumstances it was plain from the statistics available to Ealing that a very large proportion of women from that background suffered from domestic violence in comparison to white European women. 

Had Ealing appreciated that the important focus of their attention should be upon the proportion of black minority ethnic women within the borough and consideration of how high a proportion of those women suffered from domestic violence, it could never have reached the conclusion that there was no correlation between domestic violence and ethnicity. 

It really emphasised the need for good quality equality monitoring which clearly identified the protected classes and sub-classes (so women/females as a class of sex and Indian, Pakistani and other Asian women as a subclass).

Further it is clear that Ealing did not appreciate the benefits of specialist services in assisting cohesion rather than working against it. Throughout the process it is plain that Ealing believed that cohesion could only be achieved through making a grant to an organisation which would provide services equally to all within the borough. But this is not true either factually or legally. 

The EA (and RRA and Sex Discrimination Act etc) before it explicitly allows for exceptions to the general principles so that where reasonable or normally provided as such, single protected characteristic services, single sex services, separate sex services etc are legal. The commissioning of services (whether the result is to prevent this or allow these) needs to be done in way which is consistent with the PSED but also indirect discrimination, now s19 Equality Act.

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.

Essentially, if the policy of “one size fits all” means that some people, because of their protected characteristic, were now substantially disadvantaged, then it would be unlawful, unless objectively justifiable. This might mean changing the policy to that of providing a variety of different services which collectively allowed all groups who needed such a service to be provided with one appropriate to their needs. However, it need not, and sometimes should not be the same service.

The White Paper preceding the 1976 RRA called Racial Discrimination (Cm 623-4) – made it clear that the Bill should allow the provision of facilities and services to meet the special needs of particular ethnic or national groups (see paragraph 57). The Compact on Relations between Governments and the Voluntary and Community Sector in England 2008, emphasised the importance of independent, non-profit organisations run by, for and located within black minority ethnic communities. 

That sector, it said, brings distinctive value to society. Cohesion is achieved by overcoming barriers. That may require the needs of ethnic minorities to be met in a particular and focussed way. The Southall Black Sisters illustrate that principle. For example, in the second statement from Pragna Patel she identified the experience of the Southall Black Sisters in demonstrating how social services may be provided to those where a single-service provider may be reluctant to intervene in the cultural and religious affairs of a minority for fear of causing offence. Specialist services such as those provided by the Southall Black Sisters avoid those traps and help women to leave a violent relationship by using what she describes as –

“these very concepts of their culture such as honour and shame to support them in escaping violence and re-building their lives.”

She continued:

“Specialist services are more effective in empowering minority women so that they can take their place in the wider society.”

So, if true for ethnic minority women in 2008, why not now? Or, more widely, for biological women?  Why not take the specialist service principles from this case and apply to particular services like trauma informed support for females who have experienced male violence? Or specialist services for other single protected characteristics?

Karen Ingala Smith wrote a very important blog about the importance of single sex services to provide for trauma informed services for women subject to male violence.

She wrote about the effect of trauma on natal women and girls from male violence causing PTSD.

“After trauma, the brain can be triggered by something that would barely register for someone else, interpreting something that for many people would be unthreatening as a serious threat or danger, for example the presence of a man, particularly where not expected”

She goes on “For many women this means excluding men from their recovery space, and yes, this includes those who don’t identify as men.  Their behaviour, the likelihood that they themselves may be abusive, is not relevant. If it is not women-only, it is not trauma informed for women who have been subjected to men’s violence.”

Her evidence suggests women only spaces provide the equivalent for some biological females to the sort of specialist care provided to minority ethnic communities by Southall Black Sisters. And no reason why trans people, people over 60, disabled people etc don’t also have specialist needs that call for single protected class services.

The irony of specialist charities like Gendered Intelligence, who provide specialist services to only the trans community complaining about specialist services is not wasted on discrimination lawyers.

LJ Moses ended his judgment “..Specialist services for a racial minority from a specialist source is anti-discriminatory and furthers the objectives of equality and cohesion. I can do no better than to conclude this judgment – before giving the agreed order – by quoting the chairman of the Equalities Review in the final report Fairness and Freedom, published in 2007:

“An equal society protects and promotes equality, real freedom and substantive opportunity to live in the ways people value and would choose so that everyone can flourish. An equal society recognises people’s different needs, situations and goals and removes the barriers that limit what people can do and can be.”

This approach should inform the way forward. Policy should be made cognisant on the effect it has on even small groups of every protected class, whether intended or otherwise. We need to be prepared to allow for, fund and defend specialist services. One size doesn’t always fit all. 

Not cancelled

There’s quite a bit of public noise about the opprobrium, silencing, no-platforming, and even threats to livelihoods that some gender-critical feminists have suffered over the last couple of years. 

Those stories are true, and I don’t mean to minimise them in this short blog: it happens, and when it does it is disgraceful and shocking – and sometimes seriously harmful for the victims. But I worry that those cases are having a greater chilling effect than the true risks merit. The bullies only have to make a few high-profile examples for many other people who might otherwise speak up to be frightened into silence. 

So this, for a change, is a positive story of speaking up without adverse effects. 

I have written widely on the law relating to sex, gender and gender identity. Most of my writing has appeared on this blog, but I’ve also been published in the Employment Lawyers Association Briefing, the Discrimination Law Association Briefing and the Scottish Law Times. My blogs here regularly get viewing figures in the thousands – over 16,000 in the case of Submission and Compliance, my long read from February about Stonewall’s excessive influence. Some of my writing has been controversial even among members of the Legal Feminist collective: for instance, when I wrote (here) about Mridul Wadhwa’s appointment as CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, I used masculine pronouns, because it seemed to me important to write in a manner firmly grounded in reality. These days, for the same reason, I don’t use the expressions “trans woman” or “transwoman”, but “trans-identifying male” or “trans-identifying man”: again, I feel increasingly strongly that it is necessary to use words that reflect reality. Those choices are not universally endorsed by my Legal Feminist friends and colleagues, and some have said that they would feel unable to retweet in their own names material of that nature. (Despite disagreeing on this, we have stayed friends. Amazing, isn’t it?) 

But gender extremists would go much further, and characterise some of my writing as hateful. And I am aware of many colleagues in the legal profession who broadly agree with what I write, but feel too fearful to speak up themselves. Given the demonisation of views such as mine and the resulting climate of fear, I think it’s worth telling the story that is no story. 

The story

I have suffered no serious adverse consequences from my gender-critical writing.

The End.

That’s it. Sorry – it’s rather a boring story, but it’s true. Actually, I can add this. Not merely have I suffered no serious adverse consequences: I have reaped very considerable benefits, chief among which is the addition of the rest of the Legal Feminists to my professional network.

I’m careful, of course. I make sure that everything I write is grounded in solidly evidenced fact, or what is – at least in my genuine view – a correct interpretation of the law. I don’t get into angry Twitter spats; indeed, I don’t have a personal Twitter account at all, which means that if I am tempted get angry on Twitter (and the site is a rage engine), I have the sane calm voices of the Legal Feminists to hold me back from tweeting anything from the joint Twitter account that could harm our collective reputation. 

I’m lucky. I’m reasonably senior and established, not a precarious beginner. I’m self-employed, so I don’t have an employer breathing down my neck. The world (or at least the part of the world that matters for these purposes, which is our professional clients – solicitors) understands that barristers are individuals whose views are not to be ascribed either to their Chambers or to their clients; and indeed that a set of Chambers isn’t really the kind of thing that has a view “of its own” on these sorts of subjects anyway. So there would be no legitimacy for my Chambers to try to silence me – and to its credit, although of course there has been some grumbling, it has made no serious attempt to do so.

In addition, because I am a lawyer, my professional regulator is full of lawyers, too. That’s comforting, because it means that I have good grounds for trusting it not to be tempted to discriminate against me on grounds of my gender-critical views, or to mistake belief in material reality for hate. So although complaints to my professional regulator have been threatened, the prospect doesn’t alarm me. 

Be a little bit braver today.