Weekly Round-Up

LGB Alliance Victorious, The 'Breastfeeding' Man, and Private Gender Clinic Under Investigation

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Hello everyone,

Here are some of the biggest stories to emerge over the last week:

1.     LGB Alliance victorious against legal challenge brought by Mermaids

The long-awaited judgment in the case brought by Mermaids against the Charity Commission, challenging the charitable status of LGB Alliance, finally arrived.

The General Regulatory Tribunal dismissed the appeal brought by Mermaids, on the grounds that the law does not permit them to challenge a decision of the Charity Commission to award LGB Alliance charitable status. In other words, they had no legal standing to bring the case in the first place.

Mermaids had asked the Tribunal to indicate what its decision would have been on the issue of charitable status, should they be found to not have legal standing.

In the judgment, the Tribunal declined to do so, stating that it would be “inappropriate to set out our individual reasons on a hypothetical issue”. Nonetheless, the wording in the judgment suggests both members of the Tribunal panel were split as to whether LGB Alliance is a charity within the meaning of the Charities Act 2011.