It wasn’t totally messed up
One seocnd I’m in a game once im out I’ll write one
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“this older law would break if not interpreted along biological lines”
my point is that the correct solution is just to fix ur broken laws then 
That requires people in political power to display even a semblance of intelligence, and not just speccing into eloquence instead of making any sense.
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personal evil schemes
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GRA 2004 allows people to change their gender and be recognised as a different sex. The court have ruled that they have the authority to disapply this where the rule is unworkable.
The court have ruled that due to the wording of three sections of the Equality Act, which are only physically applicable to cisgender women, the ‘women’ the Act must be referring to are only cisgender women.
They’ve also suggested that single-sex services would be impractical to operate if an interpretation other than biological sex was intended.
The clarified interpretation of the EA 2010 by the UKSC does not remove transgender people’s protections under the EA 2010, according to the UKSC.
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I’m hoping they clarified what “unworkable” means, but I get the sense they’re leaving that to be decided by future courts.
The Equality Act is seen as a Consitutional Act (meaning its very hard to change) and the reason for changing it would be unpopular
It’s Not That Easy
The UK is a very stable country which is good when your laws are good and not when they’re not
You can’t just elect a different politician and have massive change
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UKSC Summary of Reasoning
(22) Summary of our reasoning
- We are aware that this is a long judgment. It may assist therefore if we summarise our reasoning.
(i) The question for the court is a question of statutory interpretation; we are concerned with the meaning of the provisions of the EA 2010 in the light of section 9 of the GRA (para 2).
(ii) Parliament in using the words “man” and “woman” in the SDA 1975 referred to biological sex (paras 36-51).
(iii) The 1999 Regulations, enacted in response to P v S, created a new protected characteristic of a person intending to undergo, or undergoing or having undergone gender reassignment. The 1999 Regulations did not amend the meaning of “man” or “woman” in the SDA 1975 (paras 54-62).
(iv) The GRA 2004 did not amend the meaning of “man” and “woman” in the SDA 1975 (para 80).
(v) Section 9(3) of the GRA 2004 disapplies the rule in section 9(1) of that Act where the words of legislation, enacted before or after the commencement of the GRA 2004, are on careful consideration interpreted in their context and having regard to their purpose to be inconsistent with that rule. It is not necessary that there are express words disapplying the rule in section 9(1) of the GRA 2004 or that such disapplication arises by necessary implication as the legality principle does not apply (paras 99-104).
(vi) The context in which the EA 2010 was enacted was therefore that the SDA 1975 definitions of “man” and “woman” referred to biological sex and trans people had the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
(vii) The EA 2010 is an amending and consolidating statute. It enacts group-based protections against discrimination on the grounds of sex and gender reassignment and imposes duties of positive action (paras 113, 142-149).
(viii) It is important that the EA 2010 is interpreted in a clear and consistent way so that groups which share a protected characteristic can be identified by those on whom the Act imposes obligations so that they can perform those obligations in a practical way (paras 151-154).
(ix) There is no indication in relevant secondary materials that the EA 2010 modified in any material way the meaning of “man” and “woman” or “sex” from the meanings in the SDA 1975 (para 164).
(x) Interpreting “sex” as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of “man” and “woman” and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way. It would create heterogeneous groupings. As a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination, and especially those relating to pregnancy and maternity (sections 13(6), 17 and 18), and to protection from risks specifically affecting women (Schedule 22, paragraph 2), can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex (paras 172, 177-188).
(xi) We reject the suggestion of the Inner House that the words can bear a variable meaning so that in the provisions relating to pregnancy and maternity the EA 2010 is referring to biological sex only, while elsewhere it refers to certificated sex as well (paras 189-197).
(xii) Gender reassignment and sex are separate bases for discrimination and inequality. The interpretation favoured by the EHRC and the Scottish Ministers would create two sub-groups within those who share the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, giving trans persons who possess a GRC greater rights than those who do not. Those seeking to perform their obligations under the Act would have no obvious means of distinguishing between the two sub-groups to whom different duties were owed, particularly since they could not ask persons whether they had obtained a GRC (paras 198-203).
(xiii) That interpretation would also seriously weaken the protections given to those with the protected characteristic of sexual orientation for example by interfering with their ability to have lesbian-only spaces and associations (paras 204-209).
(xiv) There are other provisions whose proper functioning requires a biological interpretation of “sex”. These include separate spaces and single-sex services (including changing rooms, hostels and medical services), communal accommodation and others (paras 210-228).
(xv) Similar incoherence and impracticability arise in the operations of provisions relating to single-sex characteristic associations and charities, women’s fair participation in sport, the operation of the public sector equality duty, and the armed forces (paras 229-246).
(xvi) It is striking that the EHRC has advised the UK Government of the problems created by its interpretation of the EA 2010, which include many of the matters which we have discussed above, and has called for legislation to amend the Act. The absence of coherence and the practical problems to which that interpretation gives rise are clear pointers that the interpretation is not correct (para 247).
(xvii) The interpretation of the EA 2010 (ie the biological sex reading), which we conclude is the only correct one, does not cause disadvantage to trans people, with or without a GRC. In the light of case law interpreting the relevant provisions, they would be able to invoke the provisions on direct discrimination and harassment, and indirect discrimination. A certificated sex reading is not required to give them those protections (paras 248-263).
(xviii) We therefore conclude that the provisions of the EA 2010 which we have discussed are provisions to which section 9(3) of the GRA 2004 applies. The meaning of the terms “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the EA 2010 is biological and not certificated sex. Any other interpretation would render the EA 2010 incoherent and impracticable to operate (para 264).
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Is a GRC that difficult to obtain?
I understand the idea that allowing businesses to ask for a GRC can be used to discriminate against people, but I don’t feel like there’d be discrimination within the trans community over having a GRC or not without there being a significant barrier.
So, the thing is, all of these laws/services were almost certainly using de facto self-identification labels for gender/sex rather than a karyotypical one since their literal beginning. A woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis was able to give birth to twins using a donor egg. This ruling would say that a woman with this condition that was literally pregnant would be ineligible for maternity services because she would karotypically be “male” while being phenotypically female since birth and throughout her entire life, and, crucially, literally carrying children in this example.
This ruling almost certainly causes problems for intersex folks as well who do not have what would typically be thought of as a male or female karyotype, but may have need of services on either side that they may confusingly be ineligible for. There’s also tetragametic chimerism where an individual could have two distinct karyotypes (one of them is usually phenotypically dominant), and it’s now unclear if such an individual would qualify as both male and female, or somehow neither. In these cases of ambiguity, it doesn’t suffice to just pick one of them because what service or space they need in a given moment may not constantly align with a specific karyotype associated with a “biological sex”. Compounding the potential problems: what if in the future medical science advances enough such that trans women can get pregnant? For what good purpose is there in excluding them?
Words do, in fact, have variable meaning, these total fucking dipshits. The word “bear” in the sentence I just quoted, even as just an intransitive verb, has 7 distinct meanings in the first dictionary I checked. As a a transitive verb it has several meanings, and it has several meanings as a noun. That’s one (1) word in that sentence that has over ten meanings. Just like
literally just acknowledging that homonyms do in fact exist, and disambiguation is required. Patently absurd to argue that “woman” or even “female” has to or should be interpreted as strict mononyms regardless of context.
This is an example where regardless of their reasoning, the judges should be recognized for what they are (transphobic), and call the ruling what it is: bad precedent.
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The precedent in Imperial Tobacco “is to adopt an approach to the meaning of a statute that is constant and
predictable. This will be achieved if the legislation is construed according to the
ordinary meaning of the words used.”
As I understand it, they argue that it would be impossible to maintain a varied meaning of sex under the Equality Act, and this is one of the factors that led them to consider ‘sex’ as biological sex across the entire Act.
From UKSC Judgement
- At para 62 the Inner House continued:
Page 57
“To interpret these provisions as including only those who are
pregnant both as a matter of fact and biology, regardless of the
terms of any GRC, does not detract from the proposition that
the default interpretation of ‘woman’ or ‘female’ would,
elsewhere in the Act, include such a person. We do not consider
that such an approach leads to an interpretation which is other
than ‘constant and predictable’ (Imperial Tobacco, Lord Hope,
para 14). We do not understand the observations in Imperial
Tobacco as excluding an interpretation under which a word or
phrase has a default meaning within a statute other than where
the context clearly mandates otherwise. What is required is that
whenever the phrase or word occurs, its meaning within the
particular context where it appears is clear and predictable. The
approach which we have identified achieves that.”
- We respectfully disagree with this conclusion. By its nature a variable definition
is neither clear, constant nor predictable. It is the opposite in fact. It is also contradicted
by the single definition of sex that fixes its meaning in the EA 2010.
if i drive 2 hours out into western mass then i can see the stars
it’s crazy ngl. i only properly saw a starry sky for the first time a few years ago bc i went camping in vermont
I was doing some calculation for the amount of money I had and was like “guess I need to donate plasma twice this week” and then I forgot I had 400 dollars sitting in the plasma bank card tbat I could transfer
Anyway I’m going for 500 dollars for 2.5 weeks of plasma dination starting tomorrow now with a different center
Right but I would contend that until that ruling it was in fact using a definition that appropriately varies based on context, and that including trans people where appropriate is not difficult. Like the law was written without trans or intersex people in mind, but it did not matter for execution (self-idenitification worked fine without issue). It was only when bigots wanted a different definition to exclude trans people that self-idenitification did not suffice.
To put it another way, humans have, without significant issue, relied on self-idenitification for gender (sex) for all of history. We may make assumptions based on external characteristics, but if you said “ma’am” on the phone and was the person on the line corrected you to “sir”, no one would ever argue or have thought twice about it (largely still true today, but the heightened awareness of people have changed this, largely just to spite trans people). When the law was written, this same logic applied e.g. women includes anyone who self-identifies as a woman, but because this category of people, in the minds of those writing the law, was almost exclusively cisnormative people who’s self-idenitification was whatever they were told to identify as from birth, women would presumptively include anyone who could become pregnant. Arguing that they intended for it to be “biological sex” is reductive, and a projection of their own biases and assumptions. Not all “biological women” can become pregnant but some individuals who are not “biological women” can become pregnant. This was always true even when the bill was written, and it was always intended to apply to people who both 1) are pregnant 2) identify as women, but that category is a demonstrably different category from that of “biological women”.
The law didn’t have varied meaning for women as much as it incorrectly implied generality of certain traits to certain categories.
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hi gray
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Hi story
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hi
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How are you
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