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One thing that beats me about the Supreme Court's shenanigans is this. The Equality Act is just fifteen years old. I still have my copy of the massive 'Discrimination Law Review' report that constitutes the policy starting point for every aspect of it. The people who drafted it are still alive. Many of those who voted for it are still in Parliament. The extensive debates and committee meetings are all in Hansard. The Bill Managers can be interviewed. So why did the SC resort to 'guessing'..
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
• •
..what Parliament meant or didn't mean in constructing the legislation as finally amended and passed. It's not like the game of prognosticating on what passages of the Bible mean and don't mean. And the real giveaway is that nowhere in the case law of tribunals applying the provisions had anyone found a problem with sex and gender in the EA prior to the sudden emergence of a lobby made of freshly-minted one-woman pressure groups and sympathetic newspaper columnists that sprang into being in 2017

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in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Lily
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Lily
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Because they have no idea that that could be done. They hear no witnesses, no testimony except for that which is transcribed from the hearings at the court of first instance.
Normally such a thing is not possible, but I see no reason why it could not be arranged where possible, that the bill's drafters could be suitably cross-examined.
in reply to Lily

Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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@Liaely Yeah, you have a point there. Judges don't have the discretion to go off investigating. They work on what's put before them by the barristers and those advocates are limited by the witnesses whom their Lordships would deign to hear. So it's circular but ultimately comes back to the judges restricting what they wanted to hear.
@Lily
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Angua
sharkey - Link to source
Angua
• •

Back to the Strasbourg court then.*
If only for a workable definition of biological sex.

Short term, there will need to be seperate facilities AND staff for purposes of respecting privacy & dignity.

Let's see: F / A / M presenting.
Subdivided into Cis, Trans, Inter (several variations).
Surely the practical solution to avoid sexual assault is which, if any gender, the person to be searched will permit.
Also to have at least two independent witnesses present as I don't think the law allows filming of these acts of violation.

@Liaely@tech.lgbt

*Fediversians are too intelligient not to know the difference but for non Europeans, the Strasbourg Court / ECtHR - European Court of Human Rights is the court of the Council of Europe, but nothing to do with the EU.
Although membership of the council is pretty much a requirement of EU membership.
Unlike most courts and I suppose due to the International Jurat, the ECtHR tends to make fair and occasionally just decisions on the European Convention, ECHR.

Unlike the utterly corrupt UK Judiciary.

@Lily
in reply to Angua

Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
• •
@AnguaDelphine @Liaely Really the only safe thing is to take your own toilet with you wherever you go. A little composting number like they have on narrowboats, but with wheels and a sort of leash.
@Angua @Lily
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Nicovel0 🍉
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Nicovel0 🍉
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@AnguaDelphine @Liaely you can get those handy little travel toilets for kids with a bag to do your business in. Get one of those, a roll of prepaid shipping labels addressed to the TERF of your choice and you’re good to go.
@Angua @Lily

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in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

zl2tod
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zl2tod
• •

Is anyone contemplating applying for a recall of the Court's judgment on the basis of a huge pile of "new" evidence?

@Liaely

@Lily
in reply to Lily

Nick 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
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Nick 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
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@Liaely To an extent it’s similar to what happens when English courts interpret a contract. They interpret intention objectively from the contract and the circumstances. What the contracting party *thought* the contract meant is entirely irrelevant. This can frustrate clients, to say the least.
@Lily
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Alexandra Lanes
friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Alexandra Lanes
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@Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ Because when courts are deciding the meaning of a statute they look at the plain text enacted by Parliament. It’s only when that text is ambiguous that they attempt to look behind the veil at Hansard, Explanatory Notes, etc. Thw reluctance to do this comes because a minister’s or drafter’s statement on what they thought something meant may not be what any individual peer or MP meant; the intent of Parliament on something like a Bill is far too nebulous a thing to be judged on any basis other than its text.
@Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Leigh Silvester
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Leigh Silvester
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As a biologist who has researched and published in reproductive physiology I am constantly flipping between amused and ranting at the radio every time there is a report and the phrase 'biological woman' is used. Everybody seems to think that it is some kind of solution.

Neither in the Equity Act 2010 nor the recent judgement is 'biological woman' defined. There is a good reason for that. #Biologists know that biology is complicated.
The 1966 ladies downhill skiing champion was born a woman and is now known as Erik and is a fully functional man capable of fathering children.

Possibly this is not your main issue, but if they can't acknowledge and get right the basic facts of biology in law then there is no hope of getting anything else right.

This article has a nice overview of biology and sex and why XX chromosomes doesn't necessarily mean an individual is a woman.

daily-twerk.com/science/uk-sup…

UK Supreme Court judgement sex farce – The Daily Twerk

daily-twerk.com
#biologists
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Leigh Silvester
mastodon - Link to source
Leigh Silvester
• •

From the same article, this more recent woman also demonstrates how biology confounds the unwary.

Sarah Gronert – German tennis player. She was born as intersex with both male and female genitalia.

Strange how some women attract online vitriol, whereas others don't get the same attention.

Adult white blonde woman posing against a wooden structure on a beach. She is slim and wearing a skimpy black bikini bottom and a black and white short top that comes just below her bust.
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Professor_Stevens
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Professor_Stevens
• •
I can't say how a UK court does this, but in the US, courts do not look beyond the statute to the intent of the legislature if the statute itself is enough to decide the question that is before the court.
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Only Ohm
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Only Ohm
• •

I *think* it's because, with very limited exceptions, doing that would constitute "impeaching or questioning proceedings in Parliament", which the courts are forbidden to do by article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not defending last week's ruling, which I think is both morally and technically wrong.)

in reply to Only Ohm

Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖
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@only_ohm I'm not sure I agree. The SC has come dangerously close to making policy and law that is rightly the province of Parliament. It's OK to clarify what Parliament meant but when the outcome is what Parliament DIDN'T mean then a line has been crossed. Partly this is a product of the court actively excluding the people who could have awkwardly kept them on the straight and narrow.
@Only Ohm
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

Only Ohm
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Only Ohm
• •
I think the sleight of hand (or, to be charitable, the technical error) is that they adopted as their aim getting a reading in which "woman" and "sex" mean the same throughout the Act, correctly observed that one can't do that with self-declared (or GRC) gender, but then ignored the fact that, as soon as one gets specific about what biological characteristic determines biological sex, one can't do it with biological sex either.
in reply to Only Ohm

HighlandLawyer
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HighlandLawyer
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@only_ohm
The use of "biological sex" in the pleadings was an extremely clever but deceptive piece of spin. If you read the actual judgement the term has nothing to do with actual biology, but means neither more nor less than what sex is written on ones birth certificate.
Of course the appellants knew that's not what would be reported in the media.
@Only Ohm
in reply to HighlandLawyer

Ben Hutchings
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Ben Hutchings
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@HighlandLawyer @only_ohm A GRC entitles a person to change the gender marker on their birth certificate. So that's not it either.
I think they mean the gender recorded on the person's original birth certificate, but that doesn't seem to be a workable definition for the same reason
@HighlandLawyer @Only Ohm
in reply to Ben Hutchings

HighlandLawyer
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HighlandLawyer
• •
@bwh @only_ohm
To quote para 7 of the judgement
"7. We also use the expression “biological sex” which is used widely, including in the judgments of the Court of Session, to describe the sex of a person at birth, and we use the expression “certificated sex” to describe the sex attained by the acquisition of a GRC."
So, sex assigned at birth and entered on (original) birth certificate. Which is administrative rather than actually biological.
@Ben Hutchings @Only Ohm
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖

HighlandLawyer
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HighlandLawyer
• •
Because law of statutory interpretation.
Which is not to say that there are not other flaws in the judgement. But as the rules stand judges can't go and do their own investigation, they rely on what is put before them and the legal materials deemed within judicial knowledge (which they can therefore look up).
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