For Women Scotland vs Scottish Govt

Nick Wallis

4 comments

The Supreme Court as seen from Parliament Square at around 9.30am this morning

I am sitting in the media room at the Supreme Court – we have about 30 mins before Day 2 of this two day hearing starts so forgive me if this is brief. It’s a test post if anything.

Yesterday was extraordinary. I got to live-tweet for the first time from the Supreme Court and met so many astounding people both in the court and in the pub afterwards. If you have a twitter account, click here to read the tweet thread.

I took lots of photos. It was a glorious day, unlike today, which as you can see from the picture above is pretty murky and wet. Today we’re going to hear the Scottish Government’s definition of a woman and why it should carry the day. I’ll be live-tweeting again, from here.

The order of play is:

10.30am – Scottish Government, represented by Louise Irvine KC
1pm – Lunch
2pm – Louise Irvine continues
2.30pm – Equality and Human Rights Commission (intervenors on the side of the Scottish Govt), represented by Jason Coppel KC
3.30pm – For Women Scotland reply – Aidan O’Neill KC
4.15pm-ish Home time.

Thanks to everyone who has signed up to the newsletter/blog post alerts list (I haven’t actually sent a newsletter yet) and who has left comments on the blog posts, and beneath my tweets. It’s baby steps whilst I get this up and running, but at least it is live. Do let me know if you successfully received this post via email and/or you have problems signing up to the mailing list. Hopefully that should be working now.

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Comments

4 responses to “For Women Scotland vs Scottish Govt”

  1. Margaret avatar
    Margaret

    Great to get your first blog. I won’t be able to watch much of today’s events at the Supreme Court so will be dependent on catch-up tweets.

    Reply
  2. Charlotte R avatar
    Charlotte R

    Thanks for reporting this case. I listened yesterday and even though I understand the issues it was thoroughly confusing. The judges got the language mixed up and some of the reporting today talks about ‘if a trans woman gets pregnant’ – highly unlikely since trans women are male.

    Most people do not believe men can be women, do not believe women and girls should have to undress, shower or share sleeping accommodation with men and boys and believe women (and men) should have the right to same sex services in certain circumstances e.g. rape crisis services, intimate care and similar. An example that was given yesterday was a beautician offering salon services such as bikini waxing. Should she be able to refuse to serve a male with a GRC or not? This happened in Canada when a number of young women were sued by a transactivist who calls himself Jessica Yaniv because they, to put it crudely, didn’t want to wax his ‘lady balls.’

    What struck me most is that this is law that businesses large and small are supposed to navigate both as service providers and employers, and yet five of the most senior judges in the land are struggling to make sense of it. The law should always be clear and I hope the judges reach the right decision.

    Reply
  3. Jo Marshall avatar
    Jo Marshall

    Thank you for your blog and ongoing tweets. Hope you can hear better from the Press Room. I am struggling to hear the Scottish Government’s barrister from the back rows of Court 1.

    Reply
  4. Alice avatar
    Alice

    Signing-up to the mailing list and clicking through to this post from the resultant email all worked perfectly for me. Really appreciated your live-tweeting from the Court as well. Thank you for putting your head above the parapet.

    Reply

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