Mick Hartley

From the Times – Mother sues all-girls school for ‘admitting transgender pupil’:

She’s suing not because the pupil in question is trans, but because he’s a boy. In an all-girls school. A girl who was trans clearly wouldn’t be a problem.

Joanne Donoghue loved the all-girls secondary school in East Yorkshire she attended as a child, so much so that she sent her three daughters there too.

Now, thirty years on from her own school days, she is seeking to sue over a claim that the once proudly female-only Beverley High School had “secretly” admitted a male pupil.

Donoghue decided to bring legal action after a year-long battle to obtain answers from the school and East Riding of Yorkshire council, which oversees admissions, about how the boy who identified as female was allowed entry.

Donoghue, 46, who is a teacher herself and taught at her alma mater for a time, described the decision to sue the institution that had been such an “important part” of her life as “horrible”. But she insisted she had no choice after her inquiries about the admission of trans pupils were repeatedly “shut down”.

This month, she instructed lawyers to send a pre-action letter threatening to lodge a High Court claim for a judicial review against the local authority.

Good for her.

The background to her action is the landmark judgment by the Supreme Court in April last year. It ruled that the term “sex” under the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex and not an “acquired gender”, with far-reaching consequences across the public sector.

Well yes.