Staff at a Wetherspoon pub have been accused of refusing service to gender-critical campaigners celebrating a Supreme Court victory.
The co-leader of Women in Scotland (FWS), which is pushing for a ruling on the biological definition of women, said staff at Edinburgh pubs refused to serve women after recognizing them in media reports.
Susan Smith and Marion Calder, who hit the front pages after the April ruling, said the situation was resolved after reporting what happened to local reporters.
The reporter called Weatherspoon’s director of communications, who immediately called the branch’s manager, the two said. Ms Calder said the staff then left.
Ms Calder told the Sunday Times: “I phoned a local journalist and said ‘you’ll never guess what happens at Spoons’.” She added that they “had more drinks” after the manager intervened.
Sir Tim Martin, the chain’s founder and chairman, told The Telegraph: “If you win a case, especially a Supreme Court case, you would expect to be allowed to celebrate in the pub and it’s great that they were able to do that – albeit after the initial hiccup.”
Sir Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon, told The Telegraph: “If you win a legal case you should be allowed to celebrate in the pub” – Tim Ireland/spoon. Photo credit should read: Tim Ireland/
The Supreme Court was outraged that the word “sex” in the Equality Act referred to biological sex, not gender identity.
Businesses and public bodies are awaiting new guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on its legal requirements to protect single-sex spaces.
Despite receiving the proposed guidance more than three months ago, Women and Equalities Secretary Bridget Phillipson has yet to approve it, saying the proposed rules are “trans-exclusionary”.
Ms Smith accused the UK and Scottish governments of “going to great lengths” to “obstruct” the judgment, adding: “Philipson in particular sought to fudge the law through guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which had serious consequences for women.
“If Bridget Philipson and Keir Starmer don’t like the way the Supreme Court is doing, they have the power to change it. But they won’t do it because they know it would be so unpopular and stupid that they would lose support.
“So they’re just playing dumb assholes and trying to sneakily change the law.”
Ms Phillipson made her opposition to the EHRC guidance clear in submissions to the High Court as a stakeholder in a case brought by the not-for-profit Good Law Project, which challenged an interim version of the guidance published earlier this year.
In her submission, she said the guidance failed to take into account “common sense” exceptions, such as pregnant women using the men’s toilet to avoid queues at theatres.
A ruling on the case is imminent, with a Whitehall source telling The Telegraph there is growing confidence that Ms Phillipson will ask the European Commission on Human Rights to reconsider its guidance if the Good Law Project wins.
Trina Budge, the third founder of FWS, said she asked the organization before the sentencing last April if she could meet with Ms Phillipson, but the request was refused.
First Minister John Swinney has yet to meet the group despite promising to do so in March, citing the FWS’s new legal dispute over the failure of Scottish ministers to repay campaigners’ legal costs.
