A new ruling from the U.K.’s highest court, following their decision last year that trans women are not women under the law, has made the already confusing legal aftermath “completely incoherent,” according to a leading trans rights organization in the country.

This week, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled on a case that challenged the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s interim code of practice in the wake of last year’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.” 

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The EHRC has been embroiled in controversy ever since, over issues like the use of bathrooms by trans people. That initial code of practice was criticized on all sides as confusing and tossed out in October. But the court addressed it in this case brought by the Good Law Project, which challenged it.

Even as the EHRC is revising guidance, the court weighed in on what was and was not permissible in their last attempt at a code of practice for employers, service providers, and others affected by the ruling.

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Justices agreed that workplaces must provide single sex bathrooms on the basis of sex assigned at birth, which would prohibit a trans employee from using a restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

But service providers — everyone from restaurants and bars to hospitals and government facilities — may allow trans customers to use restrooms matching their gender.

Service providers should be “guided by common sense and benevolence” rather than be “blinkered by unyielding ideologies” when providing bathroom facilities, The Independent quoted one justice.

The double standard has heads spinning across the pond.

“The legal situation for trans people, employers, and service providers is now completely incoherent,” a spokesperson for the Trans Solidarity Alliance said. “What bathroom a trans person can use in a pub may now depend on whether they are there as an employee or for a drink.”  

The justices additionally ruled that in an office or other workplace settings, employers may provide gender-neutral bathrooms for use by all staff, including trans employees.

But “it is unclear how trans people without access to gender neutral facilities will be able to do their jobs,” Trans Solidarity added.

Absent those facilities, trans staffers are in the awkward position of outing themselves using a bathroom that doesn’t align with their gender, while they “may have been using gendered facilities without issue for years.”

“The High Court has clarified that trans people should not be forced to use facilities in line with their birth sex, but it is hard to see how treating us as a ‘third sex’ at work aligns with the privacy protections in the Gender Recognition Act or the Human Rights Act,” the group said.

“We must be allowed to transition and move on with our lives with privacy, not be outed every day at work.”

In a passage that portends continued controversy surrounding their ruling, the court said on Friday that it was “fanciful” to suggest that the law seeks to regulate “every possibility that can arise” when providing facilities.

The notion that a person or employer was required to “police” the use of toilets “reveals the application of a ‘logic’ so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behavior.”

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New and unattributed reporting from The Daily Mail is fueling speculation that “special envoy” and acting Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell is on his way out of the Trump administration.

According to multiple sources, the longtime gay White House official has alienated so many members of the administration that his continued service in that role has become untenable.

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Grenell, described by two former colleagues as “a ruthlessly ambitious ass**le,” was the first out gay member of the Trump administration, climbing his way to the ambassadorship in Germany and later acting Director of National Intelligence in the final, chaotic days of Trump’s first term.

Grenell, 59, was appointed “special presidential envoy for special missions” early in Trump’s second term, a consolation prize after his pestering campaign for Secretary of State fizzled.

Grenell lost out despite allegedly bribing conservative social media influencers to talk him up online for the position. The winner of that White House competition, Marco Rubio, didn’t forget about Grenell’s campaign, according to sources.

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That insider campaign followed another for vice president, when Grenell was caught floating himself to aides at Mar-a-Lago to be Trump’s running mate, according to one source close to the White House.

In July, Grenell earned contempt from Rubio and others in the administration who said his “freelancing” as special envoy damaged U.S. diplomatic negotiations to swap out Americans held in Venezuela for purported Venezuelan gang members detained in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

Soon after, Grenell was frozen out of the administration’s most high-level and sensitive foreign policy decisions, according to four diplomatic sources who’ve worked closely with him. The one-time public relations consultant has since been left to manage the fallout from Trump’s disastrous takeover of the Kennedy Center.

The unceremonious push out of foreign policy was around the same time that Senate investigators discovered Grenell was allegedly treating himself and those he described as potential donors to the Kennedy Center to lavish parties at the next-door Watergate Hotel; Grenell reportedly spent tens of thousands of dollars wining and dining unidentified guests, as well as self-dealing with friends and political allies for contracts at the presidential memorial.

In a letter addressed to “Ambassador Grenell”, a title the former diplomat ordered Kennedy Center subordinates to call him, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) wrote, “I have ample reason to be concerned by reports and information that cast doubt on your stewardship of the institution.”

“Contracts, invoices, and facility use agreements reveal that you operate the Center for the enrichment of your friends and acquaintances, to dole out political favors, and as a playground for the President of the United States and his allies,” Whitehouse said in the unvarnished takedown.

Grenell’s tenure was marked as well by a mass exodus of artists protesting programming changes at the once-respected cultural institution, plunging ticket sales, the jaw-dropping (illegal) name change Grenell helped facilitate, and finally the performing arts center’s unceremonious closure for “renovation and revitalization” (which could involve drastic demolition, just as Trump did to the White House’s East Wing).

The corruption investigation and failed Kennedy Center stint aside, perhaps most consequential to Grenell’s inevitable downfall has been his relationship with Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, known around the West Wing and Washington as the “Ice Maiden.”

“Susie f**king hates his guts,” one Trump family source said. 

Wiles regularly makes jokes at Grenell’s expense inside the Oval Office, and Grenell and his lackeys are known around the West Wing as “the misfit toys caucus,” according to the source. 

Animosity between Grenell and the president’s doorkeeper extends back to the 2024 campaign, when Wiles denied the transphobic LGBTQ+ conservative group Log Cabin Republicans a primetime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

“He screamed at Susie, and he told her, ‘You’re the reason why we’re going to lose this f**king election!'” the White House source said. The confrontation left Wiles uncharacteristically on the verge of tears.

“He berated Susie Wiles,” the source said. “That’s why he doesn’t have… a big job. It’s why he was never considered for Secretary of State.”

“I would say he’s extremely self-serving and ruthlessly ambitious,” one veteran diplomat who’s known Grenell for decades said. “And he can be really nasty.”

“He is bombastic and incredibly sure of himself for reasons that I don’t frankly understand,” said one former Trump official. “He was obviously on the wrong side of the administration when it came to Venezuela and Rubio,” they added.

“His 15 minutes of fame have passed.”

“Early on in the administration, Ric Grenell was going to be this swashbuckling problem solver who was gonna crisscross the globe, fixing things,” said a diplomat who worked with Grenell in Venezuela. “And that burned out.”

“Now he’s reduced to reducing the Kennedy Center.”

Grenell has privately told close friends that he plans to leave the Kennedy Center later this year, according to the Mail. It’s probably just as well, seeing as the center is scheduled to be closed for two years of renovations starting on July 4.

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