A controversial trans group’s legal battle to get a new gay rights charity struck off has been dismissed by judges.
Mermaids, a charity for transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse children and their families, had launched the unprecedented legal action to remove the LGB Alliance from the charity register in the first case of its kind.
However today Judge Griffin and Judge Neville from the General Regulatory Chamber dismissed the appeal to have the LGB Alliance removed from the register.
Mermaids, which itself is facing a Charity Commission investigation, had claimed the LGB alliance was a front for transphobia and political campaigning to prevent changes in the law and took both the charity and the watchdog to court.
The LGB Alliance was launched in 2019 by lesbians Kate Harris and Bev Jackson, in opposition to Stonewall, the long standing LGBT charity’s stance on transgender issues.
During seven days of hearings last year, the tribunal in central London heard that the two charities fundamentally disagreed on issues of trans rights, with the LGB Alliance taking the position that you cannot change your biological sex.
Lawyers representing Mermaids claimed that the LGB Alliance had sought to undermine trans charities but Karon Monaghan KC, representing the defendant said that Mermaids efforts to get the charity struck off were “profoundly homophobic”.
She said that during the hearing, Mermaids had suggested that words like sexual orientation, sex-based rights, and lesbian, gay and bisexual were “used to signal position against trans rights”.
“This is deeply offensive, and it is profoundly homophobic, it is again the love that cannot speak its name,” Ms Monaghan told the tribunal.
She said that if that is the “stigma” attached to those words “it pushes same-sex attracted people back into the closet”.
Separately to the tribunal, Mermaids is subject to an investigation by the Charity Commission which opened a “regulatory compliance case” after an investigation by the Telegraph revealed safeguarding “red flags” in its dealings with children.
Ms Monaghan told the judges during the previous hearing that “Mermaids’ charitable status is not the subject of scrutiny here” but reminded them that the trans charity also took part in political lobbying, including calling for changes to the Equality Act to cover gender identity.
Iain Steele KC, representing the regulator, had argued it was up to the tribunal to decide on all the information which had come to light whether the LGB Alliance should keep its registration.
However he said that just because the charities disagreed was not a reason to strip the LGB Alliance of its status.
The case was unusual and the first of its kind in the UK. Challenges to Charity Commission decisions are usually prompted by allegations of financial abuse or mismanagement, but this case required the judge to consider whether the purpose of LGB Alliance is “exclusively charitable for the public benefit”