Safe Schools Alliance UK and Fair Cop are supporting a teenage girl in seeking a Judicial Review to challenge the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over its LGBT+ hate crime guidance for schools.

This guidance is designed to educate students about what hate crimes and hate incidents towards LGBT+ people look like, how they are dealt with, and the potential legal sanctions they might incur. It is aimed at KS3 and KS4, which ranges from ages 11-16.

It effectively means the Police and CPS are monitoring our classrooms and encouraging school children and teachers to report each other for disagreeing with transgender ideology. The guidance undermines safeguarding because students will feel intimidated under threat of prosecution to ignore their own personal and sexual boundaries, and will be forced into situations which make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

We are concerned that Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence advised on this guidance given that these groups have a long track record in attempting to shut down legitimate discussion about transgender ideology and the safeguarding issues which surround it. 

The CPS describe an LGBT+ hate crime thus:

“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.”

Describing a hate incident, the CPS says, ‘there is no statutory definition of a homophobic or transphobic incident.’ The description carries the same wording as that of a hate crime, but no criminal offence has to have occurred. It is a non-crime. No evidence is required, only the say-so of a perceived victim or someone else who says they encountered, either directly or indirectly, a comment or action which they perceived to be motivated by prejudice or hate.

The Teachers Glossary defines Transphobia: “Discrimination against and/or dislike of trans-people (including those perceived to be trans). This also includes the perpetuation of negative myths and stereotypes through jokes and/or through personal negative thoughts about trans-people. This can take the form of persistently and consciously misnaming a person, as well as attacking them verbally or physically..” 

We find it incredibly disturbing that this guidance seeks to control the ‘personal thoughts’ of children, we cannot see how insinuating to children that they could be criminalised for their ‘thoughts’ is conducive to good mental health. Attempting to control the thoughts of anybody, especially children is Orwellian and has no place at all in a democracy, particularly not in a school.

This guidance is being challenged on several grounds

• It contains legal errors relating to the Equality Act 2010.
• It misrepresents the law relating to Gender Identity, Single Sex Toilet Facilities and Prosecution of Hate Incidents
• It had no input from organisations with specialist knowledge of child welfare.
• It seeks to indoctrinate children.
• It seeks to suppress Free Speech
• It seeks to suppress Freedom of Association

While the guidance purports to protect LGBT+ people, it in fact places the feelings and perceptions of trans-identified people above those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual, as well as their heterosexual fellow citizens.

The guidance replaces the definition of sexual orientation contained within the Equality Act 2010 (lesbian and gay, attracted to the same sex; bisexual, attracted to both sexes; heterosexual, attracted to the opposite sex), by substituting the word ‘sex’ with the undefined term, ‘gender.’

The change from ‘sex’ to ‘gender’ erases the biological nature of attraction and replaces it with attraction to sex stereotypes and a feeling in a person’s head. One of the examples put forward as a potential hate crime is that of a group of girls ‘rejecting’ a male student who identifies as a girl and a lesbian. The word ‘reject’ is not defined in the guidance, so could be taken to mean anything from exclusion from a friendship group to rejecting sexual advances. This is not only clearly homophobic, but it will inevitably result in students feeling coerced into friendships which make them unhappy and uncomfortable, or worse, feeling intimidated and unable to reject romantic or sexual advances for fear of being accused of hate.

In the words of the teenage girl claimant,

"I feel that if I don't like someone, and don't want to hang out with them, I shouldn't feel I was forced to in any way. Being made to hang out with someone you don't like won't make you like them sincerely. I feel my own mental health would suffer."

The guidance also puts forward another example of a potential hate crime in its lesson plans. A worksheet pictures a much older adult transwoman, (male who identifies as a woman), alongside a group of girls in the women’s toilets. The sheet later goes on to describe the transwoman crying because the girls comment to each other ‘that’s a man. Why is he in here?’ The transwoman then goes into the men's toilets where men bang on the door and shout insults. The students should conclude from this example, according to the CPS guidance that both the men and the girls could be charged with public order offences - the men for their genuinely hateful violent and threatening behaviour, and the girls for correctly sexing and questioning the presence of a male in the women's toilets.

There is no concern given to the girls feeling uncomfortable or unsafe when confronted by a male in a space they expect to be female-only.

The claimant had this to say,

"Girls should not have to stay silent when they are uncomfortable with males in their toilets. This is supposed to be anti-bullying guidance but I feel intimidated that I would have to stay silent. That's not anti-bullying; not for girls."

"It's not bullying to stand up for your rights. I have a right to a female only space where I feel comfortable changing my period things without being worried about judgement. I actually feel bullied by being told I am breaking the law by saying no."

These two examples represent a safeguarding issue and the guidance seeks to increase the state’s reach into children's spaces outside school and encourages children to spy on – and report – each other.

The unquestioning acceptance of allegations based on a claimant’s subjective perception assumes that the accused is guilty by default, even if the allegation is untrue. A person is guilty simply because they were accused.

The CPS must heed Mr Justice Knowles’ statement, in Miller v College of Policing and Chief Constable of Humberside where he said that there is no right not to be offended and that in this country we do not have the Stasi or Gestapo reporting on every perceived transgression.

Schools must not be allowed to facilitate the intimidation and criminalisation of children for protecting their own boundaries and stating simple biological facts.

Please help Safe Schools Alliance and Fair Cop support this teenage girl and safeguard all children in schools.