Oh dear. Now legal action has been launched against the UK’s equalities watchdog – alleging that guidance around transgender people and toilet facilities breaches human rights law. Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project has today announced it has instructed a team of lawyers in a case against the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Labour’s equalities minister Bridget Phillipson. Good heavens…
It comes after the ruling by the Supreme Court last month that backed the biological definition of a woman, concluding that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act referred to biological sex. The equalities watchdog insisted the ruling meant that transwomen should be prohibited from using female toilets and changing facilities – but despite the unanimous judgment coming from the highest court in the land, Maugham still isn’t happy. ‘Along either with a man and a woman who are trans and someone who is intersex,’ he said, ‘we are suing the EHRC and the equalities minister over the disgraceful and unlawful EHRC guidance.’ The Good Law Project director said a formal 32-page letter had been sent to Phillipson and the watchdog, with the claimants asking the High Court to declare the EHRC guidance in breach of UK human rights obligations. Oo er.
The news follows reports that civil servants are threatening to take both legal and industrial action over guidance that stops transwomen from using female toilets in government buildings. It transpires that civil service members of the Public and Commerical Services Union have hit out at the new rules, claiming they would ‘segregate our trans and non-binary members in the workplace’. Union activists plan to put forward a motion at the union’s annual conference this month calling for ‘legal and human rights challenges’ to the guidance. The motion states that ‘conference rejects biological essentialism and reductionism’, while both the general secretary and the president of the PCS union have slammed the new rules as ‘damaging’ and ‘impossible to implement’. Will the pressure force the watchdog to U-turn? Stay tuned…
Comments