(With apologies to Talking Heads)

With the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s momentous ruling of 16 April 2025 in For Women Scotland – on the meaning of the word ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 – approaching fast, now seems a good time to check the pulse of the various crowdfunded legal challenges to the ruling launched by four transactivist groups: the Good Law Project, TransLucent, Liberty and the Trans Legal Clinic.

The Good Law Project, led by free speech and suicide prevention champion Jolyon Maugham KC, were first out of the blocks last April, launching one crowdfunder within 24 hours of the Supreme Court ruling, and a second just one week later. Those crowdfunders – both of which remain open to new donations – have since raised a stonking £641,056 from 14,936 members of the ‘trans community’ and their allies. But all that Maugham and the GLP have achieved with that moolah (so far) is a proper drubbing in the High Court on 13 February, and a bill from the EHRC for almost £300K of legal costs.

Immediately following this comprehensive dismissal of Maugham’s supposedly ‘legally swaggering‘ challenge to the EHRC’s ‘Interim Update’, the middle-aged messiah announced that he and the GLP are “going nowhere”. Which is possibly the truest thing he’s ever said. And much the same can be said of their fellow travellers on the road to nowhere, TransLucent.

TransLucent’s two crowdfunders have so far raised a tidy total of £36,342, and both remain open to new donations. Yet TransLucent’s threatened legal challenge to the EHRC’s ‘Interim Update’ is clearly as dead as Maugham’s deceased parrot, and as things stand they won’t be intervening in the legal action launched by Sex Matters against the City of London in respect of the Hampstead ponds, as Sex Matters were refused permission by the High Court in January. (However, Sex Matters are now seeking permission to appeal that ruling in the Court of Appeal.)

Last summer, the once respected but now comical human rights group Liberty didn’t get very far along the road to nowhere before being rear-ended by the High Court, and then by the Court of Appeal, after which they were ordered to hand all but £638 of the £20,638 they had raised from the ‘trans community’ to the EHRC. Hopefully, they were with the AA at the time.

Meanwhile, the legal dream team behind the Trans Legal Clinic – fashion icon Olivia Campbell-Cavendish, instagram celebrity Oscar ‘dying swan‘ Davies, and barristers Amanda Weston KC of Garden Court Chambers and Jenn Lawrence of Monckton Chambers – have raised £28,767 in support of Victoria McCloud’s application to the European Court of Human Rights. However, they remain stuck in the gateway services, sipping matcha lattes and ordering new outfits for Olivia as they wait to hear whether their clown car has secured the Court’s permission to set out on the road to nowhere.

And finally, the taxpayer-funded road to nowhere not being toll-free, on 13 February Maugham and the GLP launched yet another crowdfunder, in support of their attempt to appeal last month’s High Court drubbing. Should this reach its (initial) target of £100,000, Maugham and the GLP alone will have mined more than £750,000 from a rich seam of seemingly surplus cash in the ‘trans community’ to fund their wild road trip to nowhere since April 2025.

However, despite – or perhaps because of – Maugham and the GLP’s “egregiously false” depiction of Justice Swift’s ruling of 13 February, the ‘trans community’ and their allies seem a tad reluctant to throw good money after bad. But hey, the road to nowhere is a long, hard road.