Supreme Court gender case battle cost Scottish Government almost £160,000

North Wales Chronicle

15-05-2025

This came after an earlier legal challenge from the campaign group For Women Scotland cost the Government £216,000.
The bills were revealed in a freedom of information request by the Scottish Conservatives.
In April, the UK's highest court ruled the terms 'woman' and 'sex' in the 2010 Equality Act 'refer to a biological woman and biological sex'.
The dispute centred on whether someone with a gender recognition certificate recognising their gender as female should be treated as a woman under the 2010 Act.
First Minister John Swinney has said he accepts the court's ruling and the Government is in discussion with the Equality and Human Rights Commission about its implications for the Scottish public sector.
For Women Scotland had brought a series of challenges over the definition of 'woman' in Scottish legislation mandating 50% female representation on public boards.
The last step of these ended in the Supreme Court ruling, which the campaign group's supporters hailed as a 'watershed for women'.
In the freedom of information response, the Scottish Government indicated the total bill may rise further than £157,816 as final costs have not been decided.
The bulk of the sum was taken up by 'counsel fees'.
Conservative MSP Tess White 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 Scottish Government has been approached for comment.