Jess O'Thomson
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jessothomson.co.uk
Jess O'Thomson
@jessothomson.co.uk
18K followers 290 following 4.1K posts
Legal researcher, writer, journalist | Trans Rights Lead @ Good Law Project | PhD student @ University of Leeds

Views my own.

They/them

[email protected]
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jessothomson.co.uk
The Onion Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying to Shock People
January 11, 2026 at 8:04 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I was delighted to be a finalist in a personal capacity for the Trans In the City Awards, as well as to accept an award on behalf of Good Law Project (with my wonderful equalities solicitor colleague Zoe) for our trans rights work. We both spoke about how much it means to be able to do this work.
A picture of Zoe and I at the Trans in the City awards
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
Towards the end of this year, our challenge to the EHRC's guidance was heard in the High Court – on my 27th birthday! 🎂

Hopefully we get a judgment early in the New Year.
A selfie of me outside the High Court
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I joined you all at Trans Pride in both London and Brighton, and it felt wonderful to be a part of our community as we have gotten together to fight back against the attacks on our rights.
A photo of me and fox fisher in front of parliament during london trans pride holding a good law project sign saying trans rights are human rights
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
Thousands of you used Good Law Project's tool to respond to the EHRC's consultation on their draft Code of Practice. And Good Law Project even supported TSA in getting people signed up for the Mass Lobby.
A screenshot of me doing a reel with the caption Your last chance to fill in the EHRC consultation
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I have absolutely loved my time at TSA and working with an entirely volunteer teeam on a shoestring budget to pull off some amazing things this year. Including our Mass Lobby, our business letter, and our digital billboard at Labour conference.

A wonderful team of people, and we've done *so* much.
A picture of some of the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance team at the Trans in the City Awards
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I came up with these badges to highlight the absurdity of the trans bathroom ban, encouraging cis allies and trans people alike to wear them.

Trans Solidarity Alliance have been using them to fund our work.
A picture of me wearing my Maybe I'm Trans? badge
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I chaired a briefing for politicians where we brought trans legal experts into Parliament to explain the ruling, and what might be needed from them in response.
A picture of me chairing the panel in parliament with a pull quote and the TSA logo underneath. It says "Our expert panel could not have been clearer that trans human rights are in crisis. It's long past time for politicians to step up"
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
And I was delighted to speak at Trans+ History Week @transhistoryweek.com
about my journalism and wider work, especially with QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com
QueerAF Trans+ History Week Nothing about us without us A picture of me speaking at the event
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
And I marched alongside my community to protest what I saw as a fundamentally transphobic ruling of our highest court. And gave a speech explaining what it meant, and urging us to defend our human rights.
A picture of me giving a speech
December 31, 2025 at 7:55 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
I really dislike the insistence on this narrative because for me PBs were exactly what I needed, and the same is true for many other trans/questioning kids. HRT should of course be available to those who can consent on an informed basis, but let's not pretend there aren't kids who need PBs.
Essential to remember that puberty blockers were already a compromise position. We know kids should be allowed to transition medically, but met halfway with blockers delaying it instead. But the transphobes framed even that as radically pro-trans and too dangerous to be allowed, and now here we are.
December 30, 2025 at 2:15 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
As I said recently in The Guardian:

"Despite their hopes to the contrary, anti-trans campaigners have not won the hearts and minds they believed the Supreme Court would give them"

So they turn to this; desperate, fascistic calls for the destruction of those they hate (framed as ideas, not people).
Suzanne Moore: This must be the year Britain finally kills off trans ideology
December 30, 2025 at 12:26 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
This is from the 2021 paper before the 'Sullivan review' was ever announced. Does this look like the writing of someone approaching an issue without a pre-determined conclusion? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
A culture of silencing and policy capture by gender identity lobbyists uniquely affects this aspect of data collection, shutting down critical discussion, and allowing normal measurement considerations to be brushed aside. The postmodernist project is explicitly anti-scientific (Sokal & Bricmont, Citation1998). It is vital that those of us who work with social statistics understand the origins of the attempt to dismantle sex as a category in postmodernist queer theory. For queer theorists, dismantling categories is a political project. Social scientists who are interested in measuring social phenomena that are ‘out there’ in the real world should understand that the postmodernists who used to denigrate all quantitative research are now coming for our questionnaires. Resisting postmodernism matters for everyone who believes that the distinction between fact and fiction matters for research and policy.
December 22, 2025 at 9:46 AM
jessothomson.co.uk
Presented without comment.
It's uncomfortable for a Leftie like me to admit, but Trump is right on trans issues
December 22, 2025 at 9:25 AM
jessothomson.co.uk
What do they mean it "emerged" yesterday? The minister made her submissions in open court on the 13th November. Good Law Project published her skeleton the day before. Lots of gender critical campaigners were there. And it says as much in the article linked here. Baffling.
Yesterday, it emerged that Phillipson had lent her weight to a High Court case, brought by trans-activist lawyer Jolyon Maugham, challenging an interim version of the EHRC guidance. Maugham thinks the Supreme Court ruling violates the Human Rights Act, claiming that the right to a private life includes the right to access single-sex spaces reserved for the opposite sex.
December 19, 2025 at 10:49 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
The front cover of Irreversible damage by abigail shrier
December 13, 2025 at 4:29 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
Overall, they conclude:

"It may be lawful to grant permission to a trans person to use the changing room that aligns with the sex and gender they identify as having, dependent on the circumstances."

Quite contrary to what anti-trans campaigners have been arguing FWS means - isn't it?
In summary we rejected the claimant’s argument. The Supreme Court’s decision has the conclusion that a trans woman is not a woman for the purposes of sex under section 11. For a question of which changing room to use that is not in our view determinative. The protected characteristic of gender reassignment is not to be wholly disregarded as it is of equal status to sex (as are the respective beliefs of the claimant and second respondent). It may be lawful to grant permission to a trans person to use the changing room that aligns with the sex and gender they identify as having, dependent on the circumstances. Whether or not it was in relation to the second respondent, and how that is to be determined, are separate points which we address below.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
The ET also says the interpretation of FWS being put forward by anti-trans organisations would be likely to put the UK in breach of its obligations under European Convention on Human Rights.

I wrote a bit about why I think that's true earlier this year:

gardencourtchambers.co.uk/oscar-davies...
Such a construction of the decision as the claimant argues for would in our view be likely (in at least some cases, although not in our view the present case) to put the United Kingdom in breach of its obligations under the Convention, in light of the case law of the ECtHR to which we referred above, and a construction of the decision that does so should be if possible avoided. That is a useful cross check in our view. Indeed doing so may be required under the 1998 Act in such cases. It is similarly inconsistent with the obligations arising as assimilated law, having regard to the CJEU authorities and those of the House of Lords and Supreme Court referred to above.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
The ET states that excluding trans people from both male and female changing rooms "is clearly liable to amount to indirect discrimination, which is likely to be very hard indeed to justify as proportionate" [811].
Lastly on this matter, we make some additional points for completeness. Paragraph 260 of FWS referred to persons being protected by section 19 where the protected characteristic was gender reassignment, and a PCP based on the claimant’s argument, which would have the ffect of excluding trans persons from both male and female changing rooms, is clearly liable to amount to indirect discrimination, which is likely to be very hard indeed to justify as proportionate, and if the trans person were to be told not to use any single sex space where there are no other alternatives that may, depending on the view taken of causation, be direct discrimination which cannot be justified.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
The ET also points out that certain comments in FWS assume that trans women might be able to use female-only facilities [804-804].

They also comment that they think the principle established in Croft is still valid, and was not overturned by FWS or the GRA. Which is what we argued before the HC.
Seventhly and somewhat similarly to the previous point, the court referred to Croft, in which the Court of Appeal held that there could be circumstances under which a trans woman might in effect be treated as a woman and we inferred from the comments that a trans woman can be permitted to use a place such as a female changing room in principle – dependent on circumstances as we address below - and that decision was not adversely commented upon in any way by the Supreme Court. It is not consistent with the claimant’s argument. The phraseology does require amendment in light of FWS as we address below, but in our view the principle remains valid.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
The ET also addresses the nonsense implications that would result from a strictly biologically sex-segregated world, where women can no longer bring their male children into the women's loos with them, and where cleaning staff cannot go into changing rooms. They say this would not be "workable".
The outcomes that flow from the claimant’s argument are in our view not consistent with the Supreme Court decision being workable. We appreciate that there is a practical distinction between permission to enter a changing room for maintenance or cleaning on a particular occasion, and to do so more generally in order to use it to change clothes, but that distinction does not appear from the terms of the Act itself.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
Huge! The ET then goes on to analyse at [798] just how significantly trans people's rights would be impacted if this were the case.
Were the claimant’s contention to be correct that would have the effect of materially reducing the extent to which that protected characteristic could be relied on by trans persons, to their disadvantage. What was desired by the trans person when living their life may not be permitted in a large number of practical instances, and would not have been consistent with the view expressed by Lady Hale in Work and Pensions, and the line of authority in relation to human rights. Such a construction in our view would also not be consistent with the interpretation of the Equal Treatment Directive from the CJEU and its predecessor as referred to above, which remains as assimilated law, and would not be consistent with a purposive interpretation still required. The development of the law in relation to what is now the protected characteristic of gender reassignment is set out above. At the very least we would have expected these considerations to have been addressed specifically.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
"If [...] all trans persons must be excluded from the changing rooms or toilets for the sex they identify with because it was not the sex assigned at birth, & may also be excluded from the changing rooms or toilets of their biological sex, that in our view certainly does impact on their rights..."
After that comment the court explained that a person with gender reassignment as a protected characteristic could pursue a claim of direct or indirect discrimination, or of harassment, if the circumstances so warranted. There was no qualification to it to the effect that that was not applicable in, for example, the context of a single sex space under Part 5 of the Act. If their decision had been that all trans persons must be excluded from the changing rooms or toilets for the sex they identify with because it was not the sex assigned at birth, and may also be excluded from the changing rooms or toilets of their biological sex, that in our view certainly does impact on their rights under section 7
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
In fact, the ET said what Peggie was arguing was incompatible with the decision in FWS, where the SC emphasised that their interpretation of sex under the Act would *not* disadvantage trans people.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jessothomson.co.uk
[789] "The question [...] is whether the application of [FWS] must mean that [...] a [trans woman is] required to be excluded from the female changing room, such that the permission given by [her employer] to do so was necessarily unlawful [...] We have concluded that the answer is in the negative."
Analysis of claimant’s argument (i) The Supreme Court decision 789. The question that arises from that conclusion is whether the application of the Supreme Court decision must mean that, under the provisions over which this Tribunal has jurisdiction under the 2010 Act as to work, the second respondent as a biological male required to be excluded from the female changing room, such that the permission given by the first respondent to do so was necessarily unlawful under those provisions. We have concluded that the answer is in the negative.
December 8, 2025 at 3:21 PM