Scottish Government spent £374k on gender court battle
This figure includes £148,925.00 in counsel fees, £7,552.00 in court fees, and £1,339.30 in miscellaneous costs.
These costs came on top of the £216,182.50 reported during the initial judicial review, bringing the total spent to £373,998.80.
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In a unanimous decision, the UK's highest court ruled that a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) does not change a person's sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.
The justices concluded that the terms 'man' and 'woman' in the legislation refer to biological sex, not acquired gender.
The legal dispute began in 2017, when the Scottish Government introduced the Gender Representation on Public Boards Bill, intended to boost female representation. The law was amended to include trans women—including those without a GRC—as 'women'.
FWS challenged this, arguing that the definition conflicted with the Equality Act 2010, which reserves sex-based protections for biological women.
After an initial defeat, FWS won on appeal in 2022, with judges ruling that biological sex could not be redefined.
The Scottish Government subsequently updated its guidance to state that GRC holders change their legal sex.
FWS launched a second challenge, maintaining that 'sex' in the Equality Act refers to biological sex.
The Outer House and the Inner House both ruled in favour of the Scottish Ministers. However, the Supreme Court subsequently overturned this.
In its FOI response, the Scottish Government said the final total is still being determined and will be published once confirmed.
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Scottish Conservative shadow equalities minister Tess White condemned the expenditure, calling it a 'needless and humiliating' use of public money.
She said: 'It will rightly stick in the throat of taxpayers that they are picking up a huge legal tab for the SNP's needless and humiliating court defeat.
'John Swinney's party threw good money after bad in a doomed attempt to defend their reckless gender policy which betrayed women.
'They dug their heels in defending the indefensible to the highest court in the land, instead of accepting that gender self-ID was a dangerous fallacy that ignored the legal rights of women and girls.
'The Nationalists' desperation to pander to gender zealots inside and outside their party was shameful and pig-headed.
'Yet, even now, John Swinney will not apologise or issue a new directive to public sector bodies—which adopted self-ID wholesale—on their legal requirement to protect single-sex spaces. That negligence leaves the taxpayer wide open to huge compensation payouts.'
The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.
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