A father and his teenage daughter have launched a landmark High Court challenge against a Brighton secondary school for allowing male pupils who identify as female to use the girls’ toilets and changing rooms.
The case is believed to be the first on single-sex spaces in secondary schools and could have major implications for what facilities trans-identifying youngsters are allowed to use across Britain.
The legal action is also being brought against Brighton and Hove City Council, which has responsibility for the school.
The claimants, who cannot be named for legal reasons, say the school is breaching safeguarding duties by allowing biological boys to use girls’ facilities on a case-by-case basis.
They also claim allowing trans people into female facilities amounts to discrimination against girls and breaches equality law, education regulations and human rights protections.
According to the claim, the dispute began when the 15-year-old girl told her father she believed she had been sharing a girls’ changing room with a pupil who was born male but identifies as female. Neither she nor her parents had been told this could happen.
In a statement prepared for the case, she said: “I feel deeply let down by the school and by my teachers. I am angry that we were not consulted about a boy being in our changing room… I feel that our privacy and dignity as girls do not appear to be a safeguarding priority for the school at all.”
Her father said he raised concerns repeatedly with the school but claims his complaints were ignored, adding: “The school hasn’t told parents or pupils this is even happening, let alone asked permission. And I know girls at the school are taught that they should accept trans-identifying boys as girls without question. Female students are being subjected to needless risk, discomfort and loss of privacy, at the time when they are most vulnerable. All children should have privacy and dignity at school, and if trans-identifying children do not want to use the toilets and changing rooms that align with their sex, the school should provide a suitable third option for them. Why should the rights of girls, and for that matter, boys, be overlooked like this?”
The case could have major implications across Britain
|
GB NEWS
He added going to court was a last resort, saying: “This action is a last resort. I have tried for over a year to get the school to take its legal safeguarding duties seriously, but they have ignored me, refused to follow up on my complaints and finally labelled me vexatious, all because I don’t think there should be penises in my daughter’s changing room.”
The family has now begun judicial review proceedings against both the school and the council.
Their lawyers argue the school is acting unlawfully because regulations require schools to provide suitable toilets, washing and changing facilities for pupils, and these must protect the wellbeing and safeguarding of all children.
The claim also alleges indirect discrimination and harassment against girls under the Equality Act 2010, as well as breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
Brighton and Hove City Council has declined to comment
|
GOOGLEThe council is included in the case because it has a statutory duty to ensure school premises meet the required standards.
According to the claim, the school has no published policy explaining when pupils may use facilities intended for the opposite sex and decisions can be made without consulting parents or other pupils affected. It is believed these decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.
An expert report prepared for the case says girls’ concerns about sharing changing facilities with biological males should not be dismissed as oversensitive.
Professor Jo Phoenix, an expert in criminology who provided expert evidence, said: “Fear and distress in this context is not irrational or hypersensitive. It is grounded in the documented reality of sexual violence and harassment directed at women and girls in contemporary Britain and in UK schools specifically.”
She added: “Research evidence across three independent but mutually reinforcing bodies of scholarship… establishes that requiring adolescent girls to share communal changing facilities with biological males creates multiple foreseeable and well evidenced harms.”
In her report she concluded: “No case-by-case risk assessment or exercise of professional judgement – however carefully constructed – can reliably offset the foreseeable safeguarding harms identified in this report.”
Campaign group Safe Schools Alliance welcomed the legal action.
Spokesman Tanya Carter said: “We welcome this long overdue legal action against Brighton & Hove Council; they have been in dereliction of their safeguarding duties for years. As regards the school, it’s utterly ludicrous that a boy would be allowed into the girls’ changing rooms. If a head teacher cannot see this, they are unfit to be in charge of children and should be removed from post. Parents have to place enormous trust in those who run our schools – how can they be so casual about the safeguarding of our children?”
A pre-action letter was sent to the school last year and the school has said it intends to defend the claim.
Full proceedings have now been issued in the High Court, with Brighton and Hove City Council added as a second defendant.
The next step will be for the defendants to respond before a judge decides whether to grant permission for the case to go ahead.
Brighton and Hove Council declined to comment.