Wings Over Scotland

We thought we should keep track of all the issues with the Peggie tribunal judgment, now that Sandie Peggie has officially announced her intention to appeal it.

Because this story has some distance left to run.

PROBLEM 1 – THE FAKE FORSTATER QUOTE
Severity: HIGH
Status: PARTIALLY RESOLVED

The judgment cited a quote from Forstater vs CGD which was entirely fictitious.

This has now been removed and replaced with a genuine quote from the judgment in that case, although there are still serious issues with the pertinence of the quote.

Nobody at all had asserted that there WAS a “hierarchy of protected characteristics”, and any potential discrimination or harassment against “Beth” Upton was not a matter before the tribunal and should not have been a factor in the decision.

(It’s also embarrassing that even the revised judgment can’t get the name of the case right – it’s CGD, not CDG.)

PROBLEM 2 – THE FAKE ASHERS QUOTE
Severity: HIGH
Status: UNRESOLVED

The judgment cited a quote from Lee v Ashers which was entirely fictitious.

The quote remains in the revised judgment.

PROBLEM 3 – THE DOCTORED FWS QUOTE
Severity: HIGH
Status: UNRESOLVED

The judgment cited a quote from For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers which had been edited to create a seriously misleading impression of the ruling in that case.

As well as changing “trans women” to “women” – a change loaded with political implications – it avoided the pertinent fact that “Beth” Upton does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate, so NEITHER party in FWS was arguing that he had a right to use single-sex facilities for women, yet the tribunal judge used it to construct an argument suggesting that he may have.

The quote remains in the revised judgment in its doctored form.

PROBLEM 3 – THE SECOND DOCTORED FWS QUOTE
Severity: HIGH
Status: UNRESOLVED

Another quote from For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers was also heavily and selectively edited to entirely change its implications.

The tribunal judge decided that the quote meant that service providers could decide on a case-by-case basis whether to admit transwomen to female spaces for reasons other than biological sex.

But in fact the FWS judgment had done the exact opposite – pointed out the practical impossibility of determining access individually, because any attempt to do so would logically and inevitably result in ALL men being entitled to access female spaces, whether they had a GRC or not and indeed whether they were trans or not.

The tribunal judge simply deleted the inconvenient passage.

PROBLEM 4 – THE RENAMING OF “NOT ALL GAYS”
Severity: MODERATE
Status: UNRESOLVED

The gender-critical campaign group Not All Gays had lodged an intervention in the case, which the tribunal judge dismissed. But in doing so, he changed their name to mean the opposite of what it actually means.

While this appears to have had no impact on the decision and is on the face of it a simple typographical error, it’s one of only two references to the group and would therefore likely cause considerable confusion to anyone reading it, who might quite reasonably form the inaccurate impression that they were a homophobic organisation.

They’re understandably furious and have filed a formal complaint.

PROBLEM 5 – SEXUAL CONFUSION
Severity: MODERATE
Status: UNRESOLVED

In a case of this nature, terminology can obviously lead to confusion. So it’s important for the judgment not to make errors like these, especially right at the start when you’re setting out what terms mean.

So transwomen and transmen are BOTH “assigned male at birth”? Anyone new to the subject is going to be extremely bewildered by everything that follows, then.

It’s also worth noting that using the phrase “assigned at birth” is extremely problematic in itself. It is contested language favoured by one side of the debate and strenuously opposed by the other side. Human sex is observed in the womb, many months before birth. It is a medical fact, not an administrative choice.

All of these are significant problems, over and above a slew of relatively minor grammatical, typographical or technical errors that nevertheless also make the judgment difficult to parse, like the missing “m” here that turns “form” into “for”.

(Which “identifiable group” were we conducting these operations for? Vegans? Hibs fans? Penny-farthing riders? And where is the “United Kingdo”, while we’re at it?)

But so far, the Scottish judicial system is adopting a policy of “LA LA LA LA WE’RE NOT LISTENING LA LA LA LA” when asked to address these issues and explain how they could possibly have come to pass.

And even the single partial correction may have been done improperly.

We know from Wings passim that Scotland in 2025 is a country where pretty much nobody is actually responsible or accountable for anything. If that continues to be the case over this judgment, things are even graver than we thought.

The Daily Record and Wings are of one voice here. This will not do.