The highlights show
For those among you who don’t have the time or patience to wade through 88 pages of judicial lingo, we’ve distilled today’s Supreme Court judgment down to its key points.
Much of it, of course, can be summarised as “the bleeding obvious”.
At numerous points, the judgment essentially makes the crucial point that a Gender Recognition Certificate is objectively meaningless, and that it’s both legally impossible and pointless for any service provider to attempt to distinguish between (the very few) trans people with one and those without.
In the light of the judgment it’s very hard to construct any credible reason not to abolish the GRA entirely (although that would legally be a fairly complex undertaking).
Next comes, in the restrained vocabulary of Supreme Court judges, a pretty stinging rebuke to one of the Scottish courts that ruled against FWS.
In another unconventionally strong bit of judicial language, the Scottish Government’s position is at one point described as “unprincipled”, “impractical”, “perverse”, being of “doubtful” truth and characterised by “incoherence”. Ouch. That’s gotta sting.
Another slapdown for the Scottish courts follows.
BREAKING NEWS: male boxers stronger than female ones. Who knew?
The words “and were always intended to mean” stand out here. Which may be true about the Equality Act 2010, but the Labour government that also passed the Gender Reform Act 2004 bent over backwards to try to obscure what the GRA really meant.
Fittingly, the last paragraph deals with the original subject of For Women Scotland’s challenge from several years ago, and delivers the simple, obvious answer that should have been given in the first place.
Costs in legal actions usually follow success, so this judgment opens up the prospect for FWS to seek their costs not only for the Supreme Court case that concluded today, but also all of the previous cases that led to it. That could land the taxpayer with a bill well into the millions of pounds, all triggered by the Scottish Government’s consuming obsession with “progressive” virtue-signalling at the expense of both principle and competence and its resulting dogged insistence that transwomen are women.
(This whole fiasco, remember, was triggered by an attempt to legislate to force gender quotas on boardrooms, while simultaneously pretending that you could address an imbalance in favour of men by replacing some of them with men in dresses.)
But of course they’re not women, as everyone sane always knew, and now it’s official. The damage that’s been done in the meantime, whether financial, political or to brave individuals, is close to incalculable. And alarmingly, it may not yet be at an end.
The downside of today’s judgment is that by clarifying the meaning of the Equality Act and thereby removing the conflict between it and the GRA, the Section 35 order that enabled the UK government to block the Scottish Government’s highly controversial Gender Recognition Reform Act may no longer apply, as was spotted by alert Glasgow University public law lecturer Michael Foran two years ago.
It would seem to any reasonable person like a suicidal course of action for the Scottish Government to revive such wildly unpopular legislation with a general election in the offing, but the mere fact that today’s case happened at all demonstrates that the distance between the SNP and sanity on the subject of gender is still a vast chasm, and given that the party has been almost entirely captured by the trans cult nothing can be ruled out.
(Indeed, it still doesn’t admit even having done anything wrong, blaming everyone else in sight instead.)
A huge victory was won today – and its comprehensiveness and magnitude should not be understated – but the war is not over by a long way yet.
The Supreme Court ruling is a slam dunk.
I agree the war is far from over.
This may be a stupid question (I’m trying to catch up while on holiday) but if a GRC makes no difference legally is there any point to having one?
Simon I believe it was a legal fiction of the time to allow same sex marriage. Hence, yes it is irrelevant now except for the invidious usage of mission creep
Essentially, no. The court just basically ruled it was meaningless.
Had the ruling gone the other way, purchase of a GRC – at a fiver a pop – would have led to hundreds of thousands of them being purchased – and they keep on telling us that there are only a handful of these people. If the consumption of sissy p**n is an thing by which to judge, it may be many more than a million and rising, because this stuff is actually creating the mindset necessary to ‘become’ a ‘woman’. No studies done, no research. Lots of lolly to be made.
And so, it can be confidently anticipated that the Scottish Taxpayer will be digging deep into wir sporrans for an unlimited supply of bawbees to settle not only the costs of For Womens’ Scotland, but for untold potential attempts by the devolved Scottish administration to wiggle and weave their way into achieving their devious ends. After all, why would you stop pursuing your perverted intents when someone else picks up the tabs.
And they will wiggle and weave.
Slippier, and more dangerous, than a writhing barrel of angry eels in a sodium shop.
I am really pleased that my school CSE ‘Human Biology’ has now been further validated and reinforced by today’s outcome.
Well let’s hope SNP are do consumed again with gender that ISP, Alba and Liberation Scot, overtake them in Holyrood 2026, at least on the list.
As for gender it’s no clear thankfully there are only two, and those in transition are undergoing chemical and surgical reasignment.
Sturgeon is deafening by her silence.
For which we are all eternally grateful.
Amen
She’s working on the Happy Ending Sequel chapter of her magnus opus
“Nothing in this judgment is intended to discourage the appointment of trans people to public boards or to minimise the importance of addressing their under-representation on such boards.“
Wot? So trans people are under represented on public boards?
The 2022 Scottish census stated 0.44% of folk identified in some vague way as being or having been trans. That figure includes false positives, ie. folk not understanding the question, people having a laugh, and individuals registering a political protest against this compulsory enforcement of science denying dogma. We should also consider that a substantial number who “ticked the trans box” on the census were under the age of say 25 and would not realistically be considered to sit on public boards.
So 0.44% is the absolute high water mark. For there to be a single trans identifying person on a public board, there would have to be another 199 board members for pro rata parity to be maintained.
The Scottish Government is nothing if not dogged in its pursuit of unreality,led by “Beth” and his mates. This just redraws the battle lines from their point of view, and they’ll be looking to stick it to the Supreme Court. The next act of lunacy will be along before the year’s end, I predict.
I suspect you may be right because their entire governance is based on doing that which Westminster does not do, or that which Westminster does and they refuse to do – to be different. No substance to anything in this area, just trying to outdo Westminster in madcap policies. If they try to revive the GRR, this is going to get really, really ugly.
If there’s a stupid/wrong decision to be made , it’s odds-on the SNP/GOV will make it : it’s what they do , it’s their * thing *
No doubt encouraged in their complacency re the forthcoming S.E by recent polling , the SNP Clown Troupe may reckon election triumph is in the bag and try to burnish their Prog credentials and salvage some spurious * victory * from the ashes of this most recent roasting , by exhuming the mouldering corpse ” of Nicola Sturgeon’s Self-ID ” idiocy , a kind of ” doing it for Nikla ” tribute gesture .
Well done the W.O.M.E.N who brought and persevered with this case . We ALL owe you .
In a way , I hope they do attempt such lunatic self-sabotage – and get another political/social kick in the haw-maws with a side-dish well-deserved ridicule
Cosa nostra!
“That could land the taxpayer with a bill well into the millions of pounds”
Aye. Right.
Tens of millions at the very least.
Hundreds of millions? I wouldn’t categorically rule it out.
It needs to be pointed out that the drain on the public purse of this deluded lunacy didn’t just start at 9:45 today. This cabaret has already been running for years, and continuously costing us all dear. These costs need to be added into the eventual eye-watering bill.
Not forgetting that Dirty Filthy Labour (branch office) will continue the lunacy if given half a chance.
Well Done FOR WOMEN SCOTLAND!
FOR WOMEN SCOTLAND 10 vs Nicola Sturgeon 0 !!
Well done for all those women – Marion Calder, Susan Smith, Joanna Cherry, JK Rowling and many more – in The Supreme Court today – against the Scottish Government and for common sense.
Now the battle begins for implementation!
?I congratulate For Women Scotland on securing a victory for common sense. It would be my understanding that one of their concerns was that spaces mandated for females on Scottish Government funded bodies would be usurped by mentally ill men in dresses. That seems like a reasonable anxiety.
From the Scottish Government website: “The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act continues to set the objective for 50% of non-executive public board members to be women, helping ensure greater equality at the highest levels of public life.”
How does this work in practice (in some instances)?
Well, former SNP MP Angela Crawley recently joined the Board of Who Cares? (Scotland), a charity funded by Local Authorities (who are in receipt of the Scottish Government, block grant).
Who Cares? (Scotland) has 14 Board members of whom 5 have XY chromosomes.
I demand gender parity on Scottish Government funded bodies! Oh yeah, I forgot, that train only runs in one direction.
Stu, typically brilliant work by you today in processing and summarising so quickly this lengthy and demanding document. Thank for this and indeed for all your work over so many years now — prodigious, tenacious, courageous, invariably insightful, hugely stabilising and direction-giving in the cause of independence and related issues.
As to the document itself, I found myself wondering if in paragraph 218 (above) the Judges allowed themselves a rare wry turn of phrase:
« 218. […] It is fanciful (even perverse) to think that any reasonable objection to the presence of a person of the opposite sex could be grounded in GRC status or that a confidential GRC could make any difference at all. […] »
He maybe a total dick
and a bit of a troll
But he is a good journalist
A top-ranking journalist. And a blog host who is generous to a fault.
The next logical step is to question the real reasons that men want to be in female spaces. It simply does not apply in the same way for ‘trans’ identified females. So-called validation does not cut the mustard. Validation could be achieved through third or unisex spaces, but they do not want those. The women and girls need to be there for them to get the laydeeee feelz that come with their paraphilia/fetish.
Anyone who thinks that the ones who went before – the ones who just wanted to live their lives peacefully as ‘trans’ – is deluded if he or she does not get that they led the way. Most of them will have been fully transitioned or hiding their sex well, which indicates that they are AGPs – often dangerous people when crossed as one psychologist discovered when he suggested that his client was a man and he could help him psychologically if he acknowledged that. He had to be rescued from strangulation. Which is why women know full well that these men should be nowhere near their spaces. A confrontation could result in injury, at the very least.
No impact assessments done on p**n addiction, none on childhood trauma, none on kink or queer. No biological/scientific basis for ‘trans’ at all, which is in the brain and the boxers in equal measure. The government did not require any evidence whatsoever, but, basically, deleted actual women and girls as having no sex category at all.
From day one, those drawing up the GRA 2004 ensured that female people who had a GRC would not inherit a peerage, enter the Catholic priesthood, be able to access certain men’s clubs, etc., so these exceptions existed from the beginning. Only for females, though. No restrictions for males. They knew who was a man and who was a woman from the get-go, and all of it – all of it – was deliberate and planned to wrest any and all rights from female people.
The Scottish government is chock-full of people who are less than capable of any kind of governance – same goes for Greens, Lib Dems, Labour – because they spend their waking hours – and probably their sleeping ones, too – thinking about their fetishes and paraphilias to the detriment of normal, everyday governance of a nation. Nothing else can account for this utter shambolic and costly Holyrood. Psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists and sadists have been given a free pass to torment and torture the rest of us.
I am so outraged by this clown swinney’s pish,these fuckwits deviants and perverts have cost our country and our people massively in terms of finance and credibility
Instead of serving and protecting the people of Scotland these arseholes have wasted millions of pounds pursuing this deviancy and perversion, meanwhile the REVILED BLOATED CREATURE chiefly responsible for this depraved lunacy swans off with her untaxed and highly suspicious earnings based on unremembered lies and duplicity
When independent there must be a part of our constitution that can be utilised to ensure that politicians who ignore the wishes of the majority of the population and introduce legislation that is injurious , harmful or majority opposed by the wishes of the electorate will PERSONALLY be responsible for any and all financial obligations relevant to their pursuance of the legislation
THEN we would see how determined and invested these parasites would be
It is beyond ludicrous that we taxpayers have to fork out numerous times for the perverted actions of a deviant government, we have to fund the imposition of this lunacy, THEN we have to unwillingly pay through our taxes to DEFEND in court the deviancy of these perverts ,THEN we have to willingly contribute to a challenge to the lunacy, brought by a sane group of individuals, THEN we have to repeat the funding due to the inTRANSigence of our moronic politicians to accept defeat of their lunacy
And so it interminably goes on whilst Scotland’s resources are stolen and our people suffer poverty and indignity
Holyrood wants closing and closing down for good. Its self interest thats at the heart of the Scottish parliament not the people who’s actually put them there.
What has the SNP done other than shame the Scottish people.
I always adhere to my rule, that wherever I see (or hear) “Acted in good faith” charlatanism, and/or incompetence is immediately behind it.
I have not yet been proved wrong.
Anything from bureaucratic error, outright fraud and everything in between of the most insidious nature, I have found to be covered by “Acted/Acting in good faith”
It is always used as some perfunctory, perceived form of immutable deflection – a non-apology, a cover for a crass disregard for any due process whatsoever – it is an ignorant, ignoble and insidious phrase.
Thankfully common sense has prevailed.
I shudder to think where we would be as an independent country with the morons in snp in charge.
Thus, I can’t possibly even lend my vote to this shower of idiots in 2026.
When do we get the analysis from Kris Boyd and Chris Sutton?
The waste of public money and time on what should have been knocked on the head years ago is beyond scandalous.
The plight of the poor and the homeless have been ignored by SCotGov, how different their future would have been if ScotGov had spent the same time and money on them !
Shame on the SNP troughers, Nicola Sturgeon’s Legacy is one of Everlasting Shame !
Sturgeon and her demented followers have destroyed the lives of thousands of confused,delusional people,
encouraging chemical and physical mutilation, with the lie that doing so will change your sex,
and it was never about them it was always about how she looked.
Woke Virtue Signaling on the butchered bodies of confused kids.
If the Scottish Govt revive the GRR, what clout will self-ID actually have? Given that the key dangers posed (to single sex spaces and protected other areas such as sport) will be nullified as biological sex will be the requirement to access them? Hm. Yes, I can see other problems continuing to exist, i.e. data gathering for population, health and so on. But I imagine that the Equality Act could be used to challenge this too. For that ill thought-through legal fiction, the GRA was not intended to skew such matters. Time for it to be repealed or at least amended.
IMNSHO, it HAS to be repealed.
Then, once done, they can go back to the EA2010 and footer (if required).
time for a singalong
link to youtube.com
What a day. For the first time in a while Twatter was fun as the supreme court in a no shit Sherlock moment figured out that a woman is an adult human female. Well done to the ladies who fought the case. We live in interesting times. Now we just wait for the trolls to try to link it to hating the English, or the special military bother on the Black sea of the Middle East. Best of luck with that.
This is a judicial spanking for Scotgov & the court of session of epic proportions.
As a tither and donator to the FWS efforts I don’t want my money back if they get costs. These fantastic women should keep the money.
That they got all the way to the Supreme court on crowdfunding is remarkable and shows the widespread support these three fabulous, tenacious women have in Scotland and beyond.
“Costs in legal actions usually follow success, so this judgment opens up the prospect for FWS to seek their costs not only for the Supreme Court case that concluded today, but also all of the previous cases that led to it. That could land the taxpayer with a bill well into the millions of pounds, all triggered by the Scottish Government’s consuming obsession with “progressive” virtue-signalling at the expense of both principle and competence and its resulting dogged insistence that transwomen are women.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if this was it’s intended purpose all along. The coloniser crippling the devolved administration with costs it will be unable to meet & have no way of paying.
I’m reminded of a talk Dr Philippa Whitford gave yrs ago regarding warnings over TTIP & it’s ability to sue governments into submission. Bored down for decades of lawfare & legal wrangling. This constant need for the NuSNP to run off to court every five minutes about stupid stuff sounds awfully familiar to it. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is to cripple the Scotgov with so much debt that it’s forced to go bust.
We haven’t even started yet on the payouts that will surely come down the road too when the fairy dust & lady feelz is blown from a young person’s eyes who now regrets having their dick chemically castrated cause the school told them it was a good idea as they were born wrong. Their Mams amniotic fluid didn’t wash them right in the womb or some other fckd up nonsense.
FFS – what a time to be alive. This scandal will go on & on for decades.
What Id like to know is why the supposed legal eagles at Holyrood & the Secretary of State office have repeatedly fckd up & allowed the SNP to run off to court at the drop of a hat? How many times have they been there now? Losing?
2 and a half possible answers to why the SNP keep losing in court
Answer 1
The people they consult with are idiots
Answer 1.5 (almost the same as 1)
The people they consult with are YES men and are only in that position as they support the SNP
Answer 2
The SNP are arrogant idiots who ignore the advice they are given
I’m leaning towards 2
but 1.5 is a distinct possibility as it is very Trumpy and they follow the trump pattern of shout loudly and only employee YES men
“It wouldn’t surprise me if this was it’s intended purpose all along” Geri
You never fail to surprise me how highly you place your English opposition. Personally I think that your estimation of their cunning is way undeserved. This issue is a child of the left wing. Labour hasn’t been in power long enough to have driven this. The SNP created the problem and ran with it. Even when faced with grassroots Scottish opposition, they ran harder.
While people like the SNP exist across the border, this fervour was all home grown. If you don’t own it, you’ll never be able to understand where it came from and guard against it.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has praised the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying the law has finally caught up with science.
“Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as … a woman. Congratulations. And ‘The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man’. Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian [era]. Nice that the law has finally caught up.”
thanks Stu for so cleverly summarising the judgement.
Get in.
Anyone seen or heard anything from the preposterous Sturgeon? Anyone?
Marie,
Not heard anything from the prepostorous Sturgeon, although she could be revising her forthcomin book to say something like:
“A big “girl” did it and then ran away”
Wouldn’t you just hate to be NHS Fife today.
Came across this today. Unfortunatley you have to be a paid subscriber to post a comment.
link to mail.google.com
LANDMARK RULING: SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS ORDINARY DEFINITION OF ‘WOMAN’
The terms ‘woman’, ‘man’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) refer to biological sex, the Supreme Court has judged.
In a unanimous decision, the UK’s highest court ruled in favour of For Women Scotland’s appeal against Scottish Government guidance that allows men who identify as female to take women-only positions on company boards.
In 2023, Scotland’s Inner House of the Court of Session backed the Scottish Government’s position, which asserts that the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 can class men who have Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC) as women, without contradicting other legislation.
‘INCOHERENT’
Explaining their judgment, Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler – supported by Lord Reed and Lord Lloyd-Jones – said: “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.”
The Justices also identified additional provisions “that require a biological interpretation of ‘sex’ in order to function coherently”, including single-sex spaces and services, communal accommodation and single-sex higher education institutions.
They continued: “Similar confusion and impracticability arise in the operation 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.”
BIOLOGY MATTERS
Consequently, they stated, the Court “rejects the suggestion of the Inner House that ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ can refer to biological sex in some sections of the EA 2010, and certificated sex in others. The meaning of ‘sex’ and ‘woman’ must be consistent throughout the EA 2010.”
In the Judgment, they stated: “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.”
Following a summary of their reasoning, the Supreme Court Justices concluded that “the Guidance issued by the Scottish Government is incorrect. A person with a GRC in the female gender does not come within the definition of ‘woman’ for the purposes of sex discrimination in section 11 of the EA 2010”.
‘COMMON SENSE’
Responding to the ruling, Susan Smith, Co-Director of For Women Scotland, said: “Today, the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, women are protected by their biological sex – that sex is real.”
“Sex can’t be changed but the law had the capacity to make a mess of anything. We’re just really glad common sense prevailed.”
Maya Forstater, Chief Executive of Sex Matters, added: “Everyone is going to have to pay attention to this, this is from the highest court in the land. It’s saying sex in the Equality Act is biological sex. Self ID is dead.”
Former Olympian Sharron Davies MBE reacted: “Single sex spaces, have become today, clarified in law, as a biological single sex space, including; sport, changing rooms, rape crisis centres & prisons. It was always madness to suggest a £6 piece of paper changed a biological reality”.
WIDER DEBATE
Simon Calvert, The Christian Institute’s Deputy Director, told United Christian Broadcasters that the decision raises a wider debate, not least “the fundamental challenge of the Gender Recognition Act”.
Mr Calvert explained: “The idea that, in theory, I could get a birth certificate saying that when I was born 50-odd years ago, I was born female – it’s clearly not true, it could never be true.”
He added: “I think that it’s problematic that we have such legislation on the statute book at all.”
CLARITY
Baroness Falkner of Margravine, Chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, also welcomed the ruling: “Today the Supreme Court ruled that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.
“We are pleased that this judgment addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces, and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations.
“As we did not receive the judgment in advance, we will make a more detailed statement once we have had time to consider its implications in full.”
The UK Government stated that the ruling brings “clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs”
(From The Christian Institute website, 16 April 2025)
The gratitude of every home in Scotland and indeed throughout the world,
except in the abodes of the guilty,
goes out to the Scottish women who,
undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger,
are turning the tide of a world gone mad by their prowess and by their devotion.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Totally agree!
Will they attempt to redefine “biological”?
It may be the case that Sturgeon and Swinney listened to the advice they were being provided with by civil servants in the somewhat naive belief that they were providing good advice. This was clearly not the case as it was with the Salmond case. Now they have quite a lot of egg on their faces.
I am not even sure that the idea that anyone paid by London is no yer friend. End of lesson.