Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No114
Themes: Supreme Court on the definition of woman; and judges and politicians
Marion Calder, Co-Director, For Women Scotland
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR WORK by donating to SUE. Click on the link to donate or subscribe, upgrade to a paid subscriber or ‘buy us a coffee’. All our work is based on donations from supporters.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Equality Act is clear: the word woman refers to biological women, those who were born women, not those who ‘identify’ as women, even if they have a gender recognition certificate. It has affirmed that transwomen (i.e. men) do not have the right to go into women-only spaces. This is a vital win for women’s rights campaigners. Hopefully it also represents a challenge to the ideology of the transgender rights activists: if sex (as opposed to gender) matters, then the myth that you can be ‘born in the wrong body’, which appears in guidance literature in Scottish schools, should finally be questioned.
Back in November 2022 the Scottish Union for Education held its founding conference. We had booked a Glasgow venue called Civic House, which had often held public events. A couple of days before the conference, Civic House e-mailed to say it was cancelling our booking because some of its staff were ‘trans’ or ‘trans allies’, and they wouldn’t feel safe given the involvement of some of the supposedly hateful participating organisations, which included For Women Scotland (FWS).
The event went ahead because the Tron Church provided a space to discuss issues ranging from reading and teaching to the growing influence of transgender ideology in Scottish schools. There was a small protest by transgender rights activists outside. Inside, I met parents whose children had been ‘socially transitioned’ while at school.
Since then, we have received many reports about teachers and activists telling pupils that it is possible to change sex. Last year, Bannerman High School in Glasgow was caught fundraising to buy breast binders for girls interested in transitioning, while Glasgow City Council’s education committee dismissed parents’ concerns as bigotry.
The Scottish government has consistently misinterpreted the Equality Act, placing men in women’s prisons and allowing male NHS staff to use women’s changing rooms. Those who raised questions about this approach were demonised. Many public sector employees have been coerced into using wrong-sex pronouns, as if biological sex were a chosen identity rather than a fact. Staff who have resisted the use of wrong-sex pronouns have been disciplined.
Scotland’s feeble political class that has seized upon the ‘trans’ issue to in order to appear ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’. In January 2023, SUE members joined the rally against the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. Fortunately, this law – which would have allowed 16-year-olds to change gender without professional guidance – was blocked by Westminster and is now unlikely to be revived. A counter demonstration was organised by transgender rights activists, with the sole aim of drowning out our speakers.
Shouting so that opponents cannot be heard, and cancelling critics, seems to be the transgender rights activists’ way of working. It has proved highly corrosive and made it very difficult to discuss this issue properly in public. The failure to question transgender ideology in our schools has already had serious consequences for Scottish society; for our children and our public life. We need to seize the opportunity raised by the Supreme Court ruling and FWS’s brilliant campaign to talk to teachers and headteachers about what it all means.
We would suggest that all schools take the Court’s ruling as an opportunity to carry out a spring clean and remove from the curriculum all the material that promotes transgender ideology or is produced by state-funded quangos such as LGBT Youth Scotland and Time for Inclusive Education.
SUE will carry on its work against indoctrination in schools: helping parents who want to raise questions about policy and staff that are ‘teaching’ children to think they might have been born in the wrong body.
Despite the findings of the Cass Review and the decision of the Supreme Court, there will be those in the political class and in education who won’t accept the ruling and will be reluctant to change policy or practice. There is plenty of work still to do... and some inspiring news:
Breaking News (Wednesday 23 April)
Scottish Borders council has just conceded that it acted unlawfully by installing no single-sex bathrooms at the new £16.6m Earlston Primary School. The Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, confirmed that the council’s bathroom policy was unlawful, after parents took the council to court.
Leigh Hurley and Sean Stratford decided to bring a judicial review against the council, with help from FWS, after they discovered that their son’s primary school was supporting the ‘social transition’ of a pupil and making plans to punish other pupils for misgendering their peers. In addition, Hurley, who works at the school, learnt that management proposed all unisex, rather than single sex, toilets in their new school building. When Leigh and Sean tried to raise concerns with the headteacher, he criticised their parenting. As SUE organiser Kate Deeming tweeted, “This is another amazing win for @ForWomenScot, thanks to Leigh and Sean for standing up for children and childhood.”
The Court of Session ruling highlights the highly ambiguous nature of Scottish Government guidance on toilets in schools. Now that there is a clear and public ruling on the need for single-sex bathrooms all schools need to be asked to comply.
SUE is very keen to gather information on any schools without single sex toilets or teaching materials that suggest that a person can change sex. If you can help, we would ask you to raise some of the following questions with your school or parent council and report back to us at info@sue.scot.
Talk to, or write to, your child’s headteacher, requesting information on teaching materials that address issues of sex and gender. Ask if there are teaching materials that suggest to children that people can be born one sex but can change to another. Ask the school to review and change the material and discuss it at the next meeting of the parent council.
Ask your school to tell you what single-sex toilet provision and single-sex changing rooms are available to girls and boys in the school. Does it constitute 50% of provision, as outlined in the planning regulations?
Ask if you can visit the school library and talk to the librarian (if there is one) or another member of staff to ascertain if there are any books that suggest that a child can change his or her biological sex, or that promote the idea of transitioning.
Ask if the charity organisation LGBT Youth Scotland will be visiting the school or supporting initiatives at the school in the future, and if they have visited in the past.
By asking these questions you will put the Supreme Court ruling and the Court of Session findings on the agenda and encourage staff to consider the possible impact of lying to children about biological sex. If you want help in this project or you have any feedback from the school, please share it with us in confidence at info@sue.scot
Penny Lewis, Editor
What if the Supreme Court had decided the other way?
Stuart Waiton, SUE Chair, provides a personal reflection on the Supreme Court ruling and democratic life.
What For Women Scotland has done is magnificent, but I think we need to consider why the judges decided in their favour and what we need to do now.
Imagine if the ruling had gone the other way. Would that mean that women can have penises? It wouldn’t, but then again, in terms of the debate, it would, because the judges said so – and that’s a problem.
Judges may be smart and know the law, but they’re not God; nor are they, or at least nor should they be, seen as the font of all wisdom.
This problem was demonstrated on the day after the ruling when Radio 4 interviewed Jonathan Sumption, who said that the ruling was being misinterpreted. Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge himself, explained that the ruling meant that councils etc. could now provide single-sex spaces, but that they did not have to. If he is right, this could be very significant.
It would mean that the law does not protect single-sex spaces; rather, it simply protects institutions from prosecution if they decide to have them. Lord Sumption was more nuanced than this, discussing changing rooms and possible issues of other laws regarding harassment, but overall his argument would suggest that things may not be as clear as we thought.
Whether Sumption is right or wrong matters. What also matters is that we – all of us, all 43 million adults in the UK – must turn to the likes of Lord Sumption to get clarification about privacy, women with penises and all the rest of it. In other words, through this ruling, the decision about basic human biology, common sense and understanding rests in the hands of a few judges.
I was going to finish that last sentence with, ‘regardless of what we, the public, think’, except I don’t think this is true. Why? I think if this case had gone to court five years ago there may well have been a very different outcome, and the reason there would or could have been a very different outcome is that the public debate, the public sensibility and the weight of opinion has shifted in that time.
The whole Trump thing and what he is doing is significant, but more significant, over here, is the work of many groups and individuals, the humiliation of Nicola Sturgeon over the rapists-in-women’s-prisons fiasco, and the shifting climate and understanding of the problem of, in particular, men in women’s spaces. The nonsense of male athletes, swimmers, weightlifters and boxers in women’s sports, for example, has been hard to ignore.
My point is that I believe it is public opinion and public activism and arguments, alongside professional evidence such as that from the Cass Review, that has changed the terms of this debate and led to these judges making the correct decision, but really, it should not be a decision that they are making at all.
There are many dimensions to the trans debate, including the issues of single-sex spaces, sports, education, wrong-sex and neo pronouns, and language policing. These are in many respects not legal issues; they are issues of rationality and common sense, about culture and about politics.
When a confusion emerged about the Equality Act and whether the protection of women included men who identify as women, what should have happened is that there should have been a debate in parliament and a vote to clarify this issue. Unfortunately, perhaps because of the confusion or because of political cowardice, this didn’t happen, and so we are left with a few judges to make what is described as a legal clarification but is really a political matter.
I suspect we may have lost the vote in parliament a few years ago, which would have been terrible, but that is not really the point. The point is that being outraged by this decision, we could have campaigned even harder and transformed the next general election. We could oust those people who think that women can have penises, and those who support children being educated in the mysticism of the ‘born in the wrong body’ idea. We could have voted in people who have common sense and ensured that they took transgender ideology out of public institutions, especially schools.
That is why what has happened in America appears to be potentially far more significant than what has just happened in the UK. Because Trump was elected with a manifesto that included the need to recognise biological sex as real, as a result he has the weight of public opinion on his side when he makes sweeping changes regarding the trans issue. On the question of men in women’s sports, for example, around 80 percent of the public agree with him, and the Democrats are having to either accept the changes or risk being voted out of office in their states.
In the UK, it will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court ruling plays out, especially in schools. Many politicians, like John Swinney, are mumbling and grumbling about women and penises and trying to evade the issue at the moment, and we are yet to see how the law is interpreted. Should schools stop using ‘correct’ (i.e. wrong-sex) pronouns, promoting the use of breast binders, reading transgender propaganda books to kids, and ‘affirming’ children who think they have been born in the wrong body? Should the Care Commission now withdraw their guidance that instructs staff to stop using the term ‘boys and girls’? Should they have to change their ridiculous policy of allowing those who ‘identify’ as girls in children’s homes to share the bedrooms of actual girls?
If these matters had been discussed and clarified by parliament as an expression of public opinion, the weight and pressure on even the most zealous councillor, headteacher or commissioner would have been intense, and things would have had to change. As it stands, we may have to go to court, again and again, and look to lawyers and judges (if we have the money to do so) to get things done – and we might lose.
Which is why we, all of us, need to continue to campaign around this issue and to make clear what is at stake here, to show why and how transgender ideology is not only irrational but harmful to all children.
It is the public, not judges, who need to make these decisions, and we need to get our arguments out to as many people as possible to make sure this happens because the common man and woman has far more common sense than the people who run our institutions at the moment. Ideally, we’d like to print and send a leaflet to every house in Scotland about this issue, and if there is anyone out there who would like to set up a crowdfunder for us so that we can do this and so increase the public pressure on our politicians, please get in touch: info@sue.scot
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://archive.is/VZoeM Will Bolton, Mother banned from playground after complaining about trans identity lessons. Woman told to stay away after protesting school teachings on protected characteristics. 13/04/25
Seen In Publishing, SEEN in Publishing Statement on Supreme Court Ruling. 16/04/25
Claire Fox, Three cheers for For Women Scotland. Biological reality is back! After today’s fantastic victory for women’s rights in the UK Supreme Court, the onus is on us to make it more than just a legalistic piece of paper. 16/04/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/17/schools-are-waging-war-on-parents-free-speech/ Joanna Williams, Schools are waging war on parents’ free speech. Complaining about your kid’s school can now get you banned from the premises or even arrested. 17/04/25
https://archive.is/XI8nd Alex Massie, The hateful and bigoted bag ladies have been proved right on sex. Politicians at Holyrood and Westminster owe women’s rights campaigners an apology after victory in their campaign to define what a woman is. 16/04/25
https://archive.is/2025.04.17-065901/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/sports-schools-supreme-court-ruling-women-tlkdrwph0 Sanchez Manning, What the ruling on women means for sports and single-sex services. Gender-critical campaigners celebrate the Supreme Court’s definition of a women based on biological sex and say it brings clarity on issues such as maternity care and pay rights. 16/04/25
https://archive.is/h4arR Patrick West, Trans activists won’t be silenced by the Supreme Court ruling. 18/04/25
https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/2025/04/19/supreme-court-child-safeguarding/ Safe Schools Alliance, The Supreme Court Judgment and Child Safeguarding. 19/04/25
Sarah Phillimore, Lying to the court to trans a child. The Supreme Court judgement has raised hopes that this is the Beginning of the End for gender identity ideology, but its roots are very deep and children are most at risk. 21/04/25
https://archive.is/gdUDe Andrew Learmouth, Maggie Chapman accuses Supreme Court of ‘bigotry’. 22/04/25
Thanks for reading the SUE Newsletter.
Please visit our Substack
Please join the union and get in touch with our organisers.
Email us at info@sue.scot
Contact SUEs Parents and Supporters Group at psg@sue.scot
Follow SUE on X (FKA Twitter)
Please pass this newsletter on to your friends, family and workmates.