There was an important legal judgement yesterday that, despite being about trans people, has somehow failed to make it into the papers.
London’s High Court threw out the attempted judicial review of the Equality Act 2010 by LGB Alliance co-founder and trustee Ann Sinnott, saying that her case was “unarguable” and that her interpretation of the EA was “wrong in law”.
To cut a long story short, trans people and allies have spent the last four years explaining what the Equality Act and Gender Recognition Act say, and the bigots – with significant approving coverage from their friends in the press – wasted £100,000 of crowdfunded money to receive the same explanation from the High Court. The Equality Act applies to trans people irrespective of whether they have a Gender Recognition Certificate, and it is not legal for single sex spaces to institute a ban on trans people unless such a ban is legitimate and proportionate.
This is the second important judgement to attract virtually zero coverage: a few weeks back the Good Law Project successfully appealed against the Keira Bell judgement restricting the use of puberty blockers in under-18s.
This week’s futile exercise wasted £100,000 that could have been spent on genuine women’s charities. But it’s not about protecting or helping women. It’s about creating anti-trans publicity and ideally, anti-trans legislation. But like most vexatious cases funded by the Christian Right, the publicity is the point.
It’s nice to have a bit of good news, but it’s worth noting that as a co-founder and trustee of the LGB Alliance Sinnott’s action is in clear breach of the charity commission’s rules, as was the Alliance’s anti-trans advert in the Scottish press this week. It looks like the Equality Act isn’t the only legislation bigots don’t, or pretend they don’t, understand.