
Trans toilet rules will not be ‘policed' by Holyrood bosses
Parliament's ruling body said it will not monitor the use of toilets
NEW rules on the use of toilets at the Scottish Parliament will not be 'policed' or monitored by Holyrood's ruling body, MSPs have been told.
Officials have confirmed that female and male facilities at the parly should be used according to biological sex in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court judgment which ruled sex refers to biological sex under equalities laws.
Advertisement
2
Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie raised the issue at Holyrood.
2
Rule changes were made following the Supreme Court judgment in April this year.
It applies to toilets, changing rooms and showers in the building, while some other existing facilities have been designated as being for gender-neutral usage.
However, 17 MSPs and 29 staff at Holyrood have signed an open letter criticising the decision and to express their 'deep concern' about the changes.
Raising the issue with the parliament's ruling body on Tuesday, Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie asked: 'Can the Corporate Body promise us that nobody will be required to provide birth certificates or other paperwork merely because someone intolerant suspects them of being transgender?'
Responding, SPCB member Christine Grahame said: 'This is not going to be policed by the Corporate Body, but like other sector bodies, we have a complaints process which staff can advise on… for those who wish to complain and which we will consider.
Advertisement
"But, we are certainly not monitoring the use of public facilities as a corporate body.'
Weighing in, Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay claimed people would be 'astonished' that parliamentary time was used up to debate the issue.
He added: 'This farcical waste of time confirms how out of touch these left-wing parties are from the concerns of people in the real world.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


NBC News
32 minutes ago
- NBC News
After criticism from MAGA world, Amy Coney Barrett delivers for Trump
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump reveled in a major Supreme Court victory that curbed the ability of judges to block his policies nationwide, he had special praise for one of the justices: Amy Coney Barrett. 'I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly,' he said at a White House press conference soon after Friday's ruling. Barrett's majority opinion in the 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, which at least temporarily revived Trump's plan to end automatic birthright citizenship, is a major boost to an administration that has been assailed by courts around the country for its broad and aggressive use of executive power. It also marks an extraordinary turnaround for Barrett's reputation among Trump's most vocal supporters. Just a few months ago, she faced vitriolic criticism from MAGA influencers and others as she sporadically voted against Trump, including a March decision in which she rejected a Trump administration attempt to avoid paying U.S. Agency for International Development contractors. CNN also reported that Trump himself had privately complained about Barrett. That is despite the fact that she is a Trump appointee with a long record of casting decisive votes in a host of key cases in which the court's 6-3 conservative majority has imposed itself, most notably with the 2022 ruling that overturned the abortion rights landmark Roe v. Wade. One of those outspoken critics, Trump-allied lawyer Mike Davis, suggested that the pressure on Barrett had the desired effect. 'Sometimes feeling the heat helps people see the light,' he said in a text message. Quickly U-turning, MAGA influencers on Friday praised Barrett and turned their anger on liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson instead. They seized upon language in Barrett's opinion in which she gave short shrift to Jackson's dissenting opinion, in which the President Joe Biden appointee characterized the ruling as an 'existential threat to the rule of law.' Barrett responded by accusing Jackson of a 'startling line of attack' that was based on arguments 'at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.' Jack Posobiec, a conservative firebrand who a few months ago called Barrett a ' DEI judge,' immediately used similar language against Jackson, who is the first Black woman to serve on the court. In an appearance on Real America's Voice, a right-wing streaming channel, he call Jackson an ' autopen hire' in reference to the unsubstantiated allegation from conservatives that Biden's staff was responsible for many of his decisions. He then described Barrett as 'one of the nicest people. She's not some flame-throwing conservative up there.' It is not just the birthright citizenship case in which the Trump administration has claimed victory at the Supreme Court in recent months. The court, often with the three liberal justices in dissent, has also handed Trump multiple wins on emergency applications filed at the court, allowing various policies that were blocked by lower courts to go into effect. In such cases, the court does not always list exactly how each justice voted, but Barrett did not publicly dissent, for example, when the court allowed Trump to quickly deport immigrants to countries they have no connection to or ended temporary legal protections for 500,000 immigrants from four countries. Barrett defenders dismiss suggestions she would be influenced by negative comments from MAGA world, with Samuel Bray, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, saying her ruling that limited nationwide injunctions simply shows her independent qualities as a judge. 'It should reinforce the sense that she's her own justice and she's committed to giving legal answers to legal questions. We shouldn't be looking for political answers to political questions,' he said. Barrett, via a Supreme Court spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. More broadly, legal experts said that in the Supreme Court term that just ended, Barrett showed that on many traditional conservative issues she is 'solidly to the right,' Anthony Kreis, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law. There were fewer examples of her going her own way than in the previous term, when which she staked out her own path in some significant cases. On Friday alone, she was part of a conservative 6-3 majority in three of the five rulings, including the birthright citizenship case. The others saw the court rule in favor of religious conservatives who objected to LGBTQ story books in elementary schools and uphold a Texas restriction on adult-content websites. 'I don't think we can say she was ever drifting left, but she was occupying a center-right position on the court that occasionally made her a key swing vote,' he added. 'This term's docket at the end just wasn't that.' One notable wrinkle in the birthright citizenship case is that Barrett, as the most junior justice in the majority, would not have been expected to write it. Often, Chief Justice John Roberts, who gets to assign cases when he is in the majority, will write such rulings himself. Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said the assignment suited Barrett, who is known for her expertise on legal procedure. But she also wondered if Roberts might have considered the impact of the complaints against Barrett and wanted to 'give her a place to shine from the perspective of the right.' Even if that were a consideration in Roberts' thinking, Shapiro added, 'I don't see much evidence that she is doing things that she wouldn't have done if not for the criticism she received.'


The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Chief Justice Roberts: Don't blame judges for applying the law
In a public conversation with the chief judge of the Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Roberts did not discuss any of those decisions, which included a big win for President Donald Trump in his fights with judges who have blocked his policies. Instead, the chief justice was asked how he deals with criticism. More: Called out by Trump for how he leads the Supreme Court, John Roberts is fine keeping a low profile Roberts says he keeps in mind that each case has a winner and a loser - and the loser is not going to like the outcome. "You'd like it to be informed criticism, but it's usually not," he said. "They're naturally focusing on the bottom line: who won and who lost. You need to appreciate that that's just the nature of what you do." More: Trump wins again. Conservatives like Amy Coney Barrett again. Supreme Court takeaways Sometimes, however, the criticism comes not from the party that lost, but from other justices. In writing the conservative majority's opinion that judges went too far when they blocked Trump's changes to birthright citizenship from going into effect everywhere in the country, Justice Amy Coney Barrett had some strong words about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent. "We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself," Barret wrote. "We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary." More: Trump Republicans lash out at Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett as a DEI hire Jackson wrote that the majority's decision gives the president "the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate." "As a result, the Judiciary - the one institution that is solely responsible for ensuring our Republic endures as a Nation of laws - has put both our legal system, and our system of government, in grave jeopardy," she wrote. Justice Jackson Supreme Court appears to favor 'monied interests' over ordinary citizens Sharp divisions at the Supreme Court; sharp words as the year comes to an end Roberts acknowledged that there can be sharp divisions among his colleagues and sharp adjectives employed, particularly at the end of the term. But he said the justices all work hard to understand where they're colleagues are coming from "to see if there's some way to if not bring things together, make the resolution as helpful as possible." "It's important to know, and understand, what Justice So-And-So is thinking about, because that will help you understand a little bit more about yours," he said. "And that's an interesting dynamic that plays out over the course of several months." Roberts also acknowledged that the court waited until the last days of the term to decide some of the biggest cases, saying they will try to spread things out more. "Things were a little crunched," he said, "toward the end this year."


The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Without birthright citizenship, these celebs might not be Americans
On June 27, the Supreme Court lifted temporary blocks preventing Trump's order from taking effect, but left it to lower courts to consider the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Whether Trump will ultimately be able to repeal the longstanding legal precedent that grants citizenship to all children born on American soil is unclear. Here are some well-known actors and politicians who would not have been American citizens when they were born if birthright had not existed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, is the son of Cuban immigrants who did not become naturalized U.S. citizens until 1975, years after their son was born. Rubio has previously said he does not agree with repealing birthright citizenship. Diane Guerrero Actress Diane Guerrero, who starred in the hit television show "Orange is the New Black," was born to undocumented immigrants from Columbia who were deported when she was 14, she told NPR in 2019. In an interview with the outlet, she said, "This is a country of immigrants. People forget - they like to forget that their ancestors came here with the same dream, with the same hopes, with the same fears. And it's unfair to say that because people are coming later that they don't deserve to be here." Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, was born in South Carolina to immigrants from the Punjab region of India, according to her autobiography. In 2015, she told The State news outlet that her parents were in the United States legally but did not become naturalized citizens until after her birth, and the non-partisan American Immigration Council considers her a U.S. citizen because of her place of birth. Bruce Lee Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon who starred in films such as "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury," was born in San Francisco while his parents were traveling with the Chinese Opera. The National Archives notes that under birthright citizenship he was considered a citizen - though he would not be under Trump's revision to the law. "Lee's parents filed for a Return Certificate on his behalf ... enabling him to return to the United States if he later wished to do so. Lee did return at the age of 18 and grew into the iconic martial artist and film star known across the world." Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship may have been designed explicitly against his November rival for the presidency, former Vice President Kamala Harris. David Bier, of the Libertarian Cato Institute, posted on X the day Trump signed the order: "As I predicted, Trump's birthright citizenship EO includes a Kamala Harris clause, specifically designed to deny the legitimacy of her US citizenship as the child of someone with a temporary status." Trump's order specifies that someone wouldn't be entitled to birthright if their mother was on a temporary visa - like the student visa Harris' mother was on at the time of her birth - and their father wasn't a citizen, as hers wasn't. Vivek Ramaswamy Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech billionaire and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, told NBC News in 2023 that his father never became a U.S. citizen and his mother only naturalized after he was born. Ramaswamy, who Trump endorsed in next year's Ohio gubernatorial race, has repeatedly called for an end to birthright citizenship. Contributing: Maureen Groppe, Eduardo Cuevas, Sara Chernikoff, Ramon Padilla and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY