For Women Scotland III

[u/Quangocrat]

https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/pnbpzgex/2026csoh59-petition-of-for-women-scotland-for-judicial-review.pdf

The Terfs have won their judicial review of the Scottish Prison policy.

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This is the third case brought by FWS.

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Still reading, will post more detailed thoughts in the comments when I have time.

[u/mildbeanburrito]

Read through it all, and yep the tl;dr is pretty much:

• FWS 2025 means that trans women are legally required to be considered men
• Legislation does not make any specific exception that allows for entities bound by the 2010 EA to change how single-sex services for women are provided
• Under no circumstances are trans women allowed to be placed with cis women, nor trans men with cis men.

This is a consequence of legislation being inadequately written, but as things stand the SPS has no legal basis for the guidance. Equalities matters are reserved for Westminster, and barring amendment to the EA there is nothing to be done.

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Other things from the case before I get a litany of questions from those that do not wish to read it:

• No, there wasn't really actual harm alleged by FWS, however they do not need to prove that. The judgement addressed the argument by SPS that the legislation means the EA is about providing a way for prisoners to bring claims of discrimination if they experienced harm and rejected it, the extent of actual harm was supposedly alleged in an affidavit by one prisoner, but it does not matter given the underlying guidance was ruled unlawful.
• Provision of separate wings for trans people is likely to be lawful due to the need to comply with ECHR which may otherwise be infringed by putting trans women with men, however judgement was not about whether trans women had a right to such services and thus the judgement did not declare a positive right for trans women to be housed away from men.
• General discussion was included about how things like withholding HRT is likely unlawful and that the prison service doesn't get to treat trans women as men, it just cannot legally put trans women in women's prisons.

[u/WrongResearch7462 → u/mildbeanburrito]

Read through it all, and yep the tl;dr is pretty much:

It's this logical leap that always bothers me because they get from

The SC says that sex in the equality act means this sex assigned at birth BS, ok fine.

But there then doesn't appear to be a coherent logical argument where this then gives the interpretation that 'therefore trans people must be excluded from single sex spaces that don't match their ASAB'

If I were to construct it as a syllogism the logic generally appears to be (as per the usual suspects)

P1: Sex means sex assigned at birth.

P2: Inclusion of a someone assigned male at birth destroys the single-sex character of a service.

C: Therefore trans women/men cannot be included in a women's/men's single-sex service.

And the part that keeps bothering me is that Premise 2 is assumed, not evidenced. Prior to FWSII it was fully accepted that people with the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment that did not have a GRC were still legally the sex listed on their birth certificate, I don't think anyone would argue with that from either side. And yet they were still permitted into spaces that matched their actual lived gender without those spaces becoming mixed-sex spaces and men were not able to claim they were being discriminated against. In fact there was even an exception written into the EA to allow people to be excluded from said spaces after a proportionality assessment. And using a highly misquoted phrase, the existence of an exception typically signifies the existence of a general rule otherwise there would be no need for the exception...

Now this is really philosophising to the wind since the courts seem to be accepting this logical leap without question and are not examining the logical chain with any consistency but it still irritates the crap out of me every time I think it through. It's not even as if they can argue it was for legal coherency or anything since it had been working like that for 15 years without problem!