Top civil servant told to ‘get on it' after Supreme Court ruling on gender
Permanent Secretary Joe Griffin came under fire from MSP Michelle Thomson, who told him it was a 'very poor look' that 10 weeks on from the landmark Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman, the government had 'not done anything about it'.
Mr Griffin insisted the Scottish Government was 'taking action where we think that is appropriate and possible', pending a further update from regulators at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
But with two women's rights groups – For Women Scotland and Sex Matters – now threatening further legal action against the Scottish Government, Ms Thomson told the top civil servant he should 'get on it'.
She challenged the Permanent Secretary on the issue in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling back in April that the words 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
That judgment came about after a challenge to the Scottish Government by For Women Scotland – with ministers, including First Minister John Swinney, making clear that while they accept that, they are waiting for further guidance from the EHRC before acting.
Ms Thomson however pointed out that at Holyrood the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has ruled that the use of toilet facilities designated as either male or female will be based on biological sex – preventing trans people from using the toilet of their preferred gender.
Mr Griffin insisted there is a 'range of action we have been taking already', adding that Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville had tasked him with leading a short life working group 'to take stock of the actions we need to take'.
Speaking as he gave evidence to MSPs on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, Mr Griffin said: 'These are the actions we are taking while we wait for the end of the EHRC process to review their statutory guidance.
'Once that is finalised we will then be able to take a further series of actions.'
He added: 'We are taking action where we think that is appropriate and possible, pending the finalisation of the EHRC guidance.'
When Ms Thomson then demanded to know what action had been taken 'beyond talking about taking action', Mr Griffin told her: 'Specific actions, I can't give you that right now.'
But he insisted the work being done was looking to 'prepare the ground' so that the government is ready to implement changes once the EHRC guidance is finalised.
The Permanent Secretary said: 'We in the Scottish Government are in a very similar position to the UK Government and the Welsh Government in our understanding of our responsibility being we need to wait for the guidance for the implementation of some actions.'
But with two potential further legal challenges that Ms Thomson said could potentially result in a 'significant loss of public money', the SNP MSP told him she was 'staggered why you are not acting now'.
Mr Griffin said the advice he was given 'remains nevertheless that we should wait for the statutory regulator to finalise their guidance'.
He added: 'I am assured that the advice that I've got is the correct advice.
'We find ourselves in a very similar position to our colleagues at Westminster and in Cardiff.'
But Ms Thomson told him: 'I think my firm advice to you would be to look afresh at that. It is no justification under law, frankly, to say: 'Ah well, that's what everybody else was doing.'
'The Supreme Court judgment was compellingly clear, there is a threat of two further legal actions. My firm advice to you, Permanent Secretary, would be to get on it, because I think you are ultimately the accountable officer responsible for ensuring the Scottish Government upholds the law.
'And regardless of your view in this matter, I personally think it is a very poor look that we're 10 weeks later and we haven't done anything about it.'
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The Supreme Court's most recent term may be over, but its work on behalf of President Donald Trump continues. The justices announced on Wednesday evening in Trump v. Boyle that they would stay a lower court order that had blocked Trump from firing the three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. As usual, the court's action took place on the shadow docket, where it handles emergency appeals and motions. This time, the court's conservative majority greatly expanded that docket's power to decide legal and constitutional questions. In theory, shadow-docket actions are procedural or administrative in nature and shouldn't be seen as a decision on the actual merits of a case. That understanding no longer holds weight. Trump's dismissals violated a federal statute passed by Congress that only allows the president to fire CPSC commissioners for cause. The Supreme Court previously ruled in the 1934 case Humphrey's Executor v. 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In theory, Congress could pass a new law every time it wants to approve a cancer drug, or ban a pesticide, or do any of the other mundane but vital tasks that come with governing a modern industrialized economy. Instead, it created agencies to regulate these things within the bounds that Congress authorizes. Most of these agencies operate directly under the president. Starting in the early twentieth century, Congress also began to create agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission to tackle more complex economic issues, investing them with a greater degree of power and autonomy. Presidents have the power to appoint the heads of these agencies, as the Constitution requires, but Congress set limits on when and how they can fire them to give those agencies a measure of independence. The first real legal test of these limits came in 1933 when the newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired William Humphrey, one of the FTC commissioners appointed by Calvin Coolidge, over his qualms about the New Deal. Humphrey died of a stroke in early 1934, and the executor of his estate sued the federal government over his salary. If Humphrey's firing was illegal, the estate would have a claim on the money that the government owed to him. The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Humphrey's estate—a striking result given the court's later divides over the constitutionality of the New Deal. The court limited Myers v. United States, a 1927 ruling where then–Chief Justice William Howard Taft suggested a much broader removal power for the president, and held that because the FTC and similar agencies exercised 'quasi-legislative' and 'quasi-judicial' powers, Congress could limit the executive branch's power over them. This worked out pretty well for the United States, which enjoyed a high standard of living and unprecedented economic prosperity throughout the twentieth century. You would not know this if you only listened to the conservative legal movement, which often describes these agencies and their powers in ominous and near-apocalyptic terms. In a 2020 case, for example, Justice Clarence Thomas claimed in a concurring opinion that 'the decision in Humphrey's Executor poses a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.' Humphrey's Executor was 85 years old at that point, and the republic somehow managed to survive until then. It would be more accurate to say that the precedent was a threat to corporate interests since it preserved the independence of their regulators from political interference. (The court often gets these things confused.) Selia Law v. 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'Accordingly, they chose not to bog the Executive down with the 'habitual feebleness and dilatoriness' that comes with a 'diversity of views and opinions.' Instead, they gave the Executive the '[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch' that 'characterise the proceedings of one man.'' I do not doubt that the Framers intended the presidency to be a potent and vital branch of government. But Roberts's understanding of the founding era is impossible to square with even a modicum of historical context. The Framers did not write the Constitution in a vacuum; they gathered for the express purpose of fixing the flaws in the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, there was no president and no national system of courts, and its legislature had few powers that could only be exercised unanimously. The Constitution, by its very nature, created a far more powerful executive and judiciary than what existed under the Articles. Something is always infinitely greater than nothing. 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What matters instead is that Congress provided for them to serve their full terms, protected from a president's desire to substitute his political allies.' Nothing sums up how hackish and unjudicial the court's approach has been more than its Federal Reserve exception in Wilcox. Many court-watchers had thought, especially after Selia Law, that the Supreme Court's current roster would not overturn Humphrey's Executor in its entirety, in large part because there would be no way to logically maintain the for-cause protection for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors if it did. Few things could more fundamentally disrupt and weaken American capital markets—and, by extension, the American economy—than giving a president direct control over the Fed's monetary levers. Imagine if Trump could set interest rates like he sets tariff rates. The NLRB members warned as much in their filings in the Wilcox case. So the conservative majority squared the circle by declaring, almost by fiat, that its implied overruling of Humphrey's Executor did not apply to the Federal Reserve. 'The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,' the court's unsigned order said without further elaboration. Its sole legal citation for this point was a footnote in Selia Law where the court had assumed, purely for the sake of argument in response to a dissent, that the Fed could claim a 'special historical status.' This is one step above simply writing, 'Why? Because the court said so, that's why.' Kagan could barely contain her disgust in her Wilcox dissent. 'And so an assumption made to humor a dissent gets turned into some kind of holding,' she wrote. 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What a dizzying sensation that will be for any American raised in our civic faith. Covering the court for the last six months feels less like covering a court of law steeped in the Anglo-American legal tradition and more like covering the Soviet Union's politburo or Iran's Guardian Council from afar. The Supreme Court's most impactful work this year has not been to decide actual cases and controversies on the merits, or to fairly balance the equities on shadow-docket questions, but to enforce a certain ideological vision upon the American constitutional order as quickly, as bluntly, and as hackishly as it can. I do not write lightly that the central theme coming from the Supreme Court as of late is that Trump's own vision for the country supersedes the laws that Congress has actually written—to provide for-cause removal protections, to create a Department of Education, to provide anti-torture protections for prospective deportees, and so on. As Humphrey's Executor's fate shows, that vision might even outrank the decisions of the high court itself when the justices agree with it. That raises an unsettling question: If the justices don't respect their own precedents or procedures, why should anyone else?
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'The deal came and there was this immense relief, and now markets are saying: 'hang on, not too much',' said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. 'It's a relief that we didn't bleed to death. But we are still in triage, if not the ICU.' The headache for investors in Japan is that almost every piece of good news comes with a caveat. The trade deal was a clear win, but the 15% tariffs facing Japanese companies are still well above their level at the start of the year. The economy may get a boost, but that could in turn speed up interest rate hikes. The deal removes one reason for Ishiba to cling to power — since he had made clear he wanted to get it done while in office — but the win means he now has a better case for hanging on. That has shifted attention to some major events in the coming days, which will offer clues to the direction of travel for a stock market that has underperformed its regional peers this year. The Bank of Japan's monetary policy announcement on Thursday, although unlikely to result in a rate change, will be scrutinized for hints that the central bank may hike as early as September. That could hit both bond and stock prices. Investors will also be focused on corporate earnings, with Fujitsu Ltd., Tokyo Electron Ltd. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. among the companies set to report. Those earnings will be far too early to gauge the impact of the trade deal, but they will help investors get a sense of how strong Japanese companies are as they prepare for a prolonged period of higher tariffs — however good the figures might look compared to the worst case scenario. The 15% tariff on Japanese goods, including autos, was a relative reprieve from earlier threats of 25% or higher. Japan also agreed to invest $550 billion into the US as part of the deal, a vague pledge that has left market participants guessing at the potential details. 'You've certainly got the makings of an extended rally,' said Pelham Smithers, an analyst who runs an eponymous Japan equity research firm in the UK. 'But the bigger questions will be Bank of Japan policy, and whether Trump backtracks on this tariff deal.' Fiscal Fears Smithers, who was engrossed in the video-game Civilization when news of Trump's Japan deal broke, says his 'army of sales people' were swamped with calls from clients asking for updates on Japan's market. The enthusiasm is understandable. After trading sideways for most of July, the Topix Index jumped 4% over the course of the week, notching a new all-time high. Toyota Motor Co.'s shares posted their biggest intraday gain since 1987. SoftBank Group Corp.'s shares hit a record high. Japan's 10-year bond yields reached their highest level since 2008 after the trade deal was announced. Two-year yields, which are sensitive to changing interest rate expectations, also jumped. 'The tariff news was a complete positive surprise,' said Hisashi Arakawa, director and head of equities at abrdn Japan Ltd. 'I didn't expect the market to move that quickly.' The outlier to the wild moves was the yen, which fluctuated between gains and losses as traders digested the news. Caution was returning to the stock market by the end of the week, with both the Nikkei 225 index and the Topix closing down almost 1% Friday, part of a wider decline in Asia. One major concern is that the weakened government — whether led by Ishiba or someone else — may give in to opposition calls for tax cuts, worsening Japan's already stretched fiscal position. Worries about government finances have weighed on global debt markets in recent months, hitting Japan's ultra-long bonds alongside those in the US and elsewhere. Local media reports that Ishiba will soon announce his resignation have fueled these concerns, although he denied the reports. For now, investors in Japan have more questions than answers. The country's trade relationship with the US is, more or less, clear. But almost everything else remains in flux, and market watchers think the recent rally may reflect hope more than reason. 'We all need to cool our heads and regroup,' said Yusuke Sakai, a senior trader at T&D Asset Management in Tokyo, who called the stock rally a knee-jerk reaction. --With assistance from Momoka Yokoyama. Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan Confessions of a Laptop Farmer: How an American Helped North Korea's Wild Remote Worker Scheme Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
