Nutmeg's week: Judge Kemp, Riley Dennis, Mo Salah

The star of this film, incidentally, is Lux Pascal, the crossdressing brother of actor Pedro Pascal. He was the first celebrity to wear a ‘Protect The Dolls’ t-shirt at a film premiere, just after the UK’s Supreme Court clarified that men are not women earlier this year.

As Graham remarked: “A MALE coalminer?? Whatever next?! A true ‘fish in water‘ story.”

The Sandie Peggie case is now even more ridiculous

This did not seem at all possible but the Sandie Peggie tribunal, which will surely go down as one of the most extraordinary legal cases in British history, has become even more absurd.

Here’s just a summary of how we got to now: Sandie Peggie is a nurse with over 30 years of experience. She was suspended from her job working in A&E at Victoria Hospital in Kirkaldy, Scotland after she confronted a male doctor in the female nurses’ changing room. The doctor, Theo ‘Beth’ Upton, ‘identifies’ as a woman and complained to management that Sandie had bullied, harassed and ‘misgendered’ him. He also claimed she had failed to provide adequate care to at least one patient due to her antipathy to him as a ‘trans woman’. Sandie brought a tribunal case against NHS Fife and Dr Upton, citing harassment and discrimination by both.

The initial hearing began in February and Sandie and Upton both gave evidence. When asked what gave him the right to be in a women’s changing room, Upton - a male doctor - said that he is a ‘biological female’.

The tribunal took a break, during which the Supreme Court clarified that the word ‘woman’ does not apply to men in the UK Equality Act. Sandie was then cleared of all misconduct allegations against her. When the tribunal resumed, it emerged that NHS Fife’s equality and human rights lead was not aware of the law concerning single sex spaces (and also didn’t know if she herself was male or female).

It was also revealed that Upton’s line manager, a doctor who stated that biological sex is not binary, had offered ‘full support’ for him before the incident in the changing rooms had been investigated. In fact, she emailed at least 19 consultants to inform them that Upton had been victimised by a ‘confrontational and aggressive’ nurse.

NHS Fife then released a statement alleging that Sandie, her legal team and the charity Sex Matters were conspiring to manipulate public opinion and discredit the health board. They claimed this attack on the board endangered individual members who were being subjected to threats and abuse. No evidence for these allegations was provided and NHS Fife revised the statement several times. In fact, throughout 2025, Scotland’s information commissioner has rebuked NHS Fife for its “poor handling” of requests for the full cost of the employment hearing (more than £400,000 of taxpayers’ money), as well as threatening action and carrying out other investigations over NHS Fife’s communication with the public about the tribunal.

Also during the tribunal, the health board admitted it did not carry out an equality impact assessment before allowing men into the women’s facilities. NHS Fife was then warned by the UK’s equality watchdog to ensure its approach to single sex spaces is lawful ‘without delay’.

Jane Russell KC, acting for NHS Fife and Upton, then tried to block media access to Sandie’s written submissions. While this failed, she did succeed in redacting Upton’s ‘deadname’ (Theo), despite it being in the public domain. Much of Russell’s arguments centred on seemingly irrelevant details about Sandie’s character, which tried to portray her as a bigot.

Shortly before the verdict was released, the CEO of NHS Fife, Carol Potter, announced plans to ‘retire early’. At least two MSPs have called on the Scottish government to step in and sack her immediately, saying she is not fit to do her job and does not deserve a large pension. The Scottish health secretary has said he will wait until he decides on her future.

And then came the verdict. Judge Alexander ‘Sandy’ Kemp upheld four of Sandie’s claims against NHS Fife.

In a 318-page ruling, Kemp wrote that the NHS should have stopped allowing Dr Upton to use the changing area until different work rotas took effect - at which point they wouldn’t be working together. He added that the health board had taken an unreasonable time to investigate the claims against Sandie and that officials were wrong to tell her not to discuss the case. He also found that the health board’s reference to unproven claims that Sandie had put patients at risk amounted to harassment. A future hearing will determine what, if any, compensation Sandie receives for this.

However, multiple other allegations of discrimination and victimisation against NHS Fife, and Sandie’s claim against Dr Upton, were, surprisingly, dismissed. Given how badly the court case seemed to go for NHS Fife and Dr Upton, a full victory was expected.

The former chairwoman of the UK’s equality watchdog, Baroness Falkner, responded: “It is a highly unusual and surprising judgment if you base it on what happened in court during those months, and the written submissions.” She added that there were “an awful lot of questions about the veracity” of the tribunal’s ruling.

Furthermore, she said the ruling appeared “not be to be compatible” with the Supreme Court ruling, stating that “if you decide that you’re providing a single-sex facility, then you cannot allow any biological males into that facility.”

And then it truly became a farce. Kemp’s judgment includes quotes from other specific legal judgments. One key quote referenced the Maya Forstater case, in which the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2021 stated that the ‘Equality Act does not create a hierarchy of protected characteristics’ - a phrase that’s typically used by trans activists. Maya confirmed that this statement did not actually appear in her judgment, and was, in fact, simply made up. As JK Rowling said: “Misrepresentations of the Forstater ruling are commonplace in the trans activist community, but for this to turn up in an actual court ruling is truly shocking.”

Judge Kemp admitted the mistake but has (at the time of writing) not explained how it happened. The Judicial Office simply said it was a “clerical mistake, error or omission”, and the fabricated quote has been removed. This, it later confirmed, was the only amendment made to the original ruling.

It got much worse. Kemp’s ruling contains a quote from a 2018 case against Ashers Baking Company, after it refused to make a cake with a message supporting same-sex marriage. This quote also uses trans activist language about there not being a “hierarchy of rights”, adding that “all are to be treated with equal respect”. However, this quote also does not appear in that judgment and appears to be made up.

All the quotes from the judgment were then examined and several of them are either misquoted or entirely made up. At the time of writing, at least ten significant errors appear to be in Kemp’s judgment, mostly seemingly using the language of trans activists. There are also claims that the whole judgment might have been written by AI. Did a judge, on a high-profile case about a man in a women’s space, hand his entire judgment over to an AI bot that had been programmed by a Big Tech that’s notoriously sympathetic to trans activism?

Whatever the explanation, this means there have been two landmark employment law rulings surrounding men in women’s spaces in the last two weeks, and in both cases incredible questions about the judgment have immediately been asked.

Unsurprisingly, Sandie has announced she will appeal the ruling. Ben Cooper KC has joined her legal team and will be leading the appeal.

Various legal experts have stated her chances of a successful appeal are high.

At least we’ve got the media to make up for the judiciary

This was a headline and opening in Scottish newspaper The Herald about the above farce.

In the article, Marissa MacWhirter states that “biological sex is not immutable” and as many as 1.7% of people in the world might be intersex. Neither of these claims are true.

And yet this might not be the worst article to appear in the media in the last week.

BBC health and science journalist Melissa Hogenboom has written an article about “structural sexism”, and how this harms women. The first, and far and away most prominent, example she gives of structural sexism is the US government editing a health website. While the details of what was edited are not even given, a sociologist is quoted who says the edit “reinforces biological sex essentialism and treats trans people as a threat”. She also references this article in The Lancet, which states: ‘[The US government now] defines sex as a binary and immutable biological classification ... a definition inconsistent with biological and medical science’.

The BBC World Service wasn’t much better. After last week broadcasting, yet again, ‘The mosque for Bangladesh’s transgender women’, this week it broadcast ‘I was a nun, the late Pope helped me support trans women’ about cross-dressing men in Argentina.

Can you spot the man here?

Australian women’s rights campaigner Kirralie Smith has been ordered to pay $95,000 to two men she was found to have ‘unlawfully vilified’ by referring to them as ‘male’ or ‘a man.’ Smith objected to the men in question, Justin ‘Riley’ Dennis (above) and Nicolas ‘Stephanie’ Blanch (below), playing football on teams with women and girls where they, and other men who pretend to be women, had reportedly hospitalised female players.

Smith organised online and letter-writing campaigns aiming to force Australian football associations to take action to ensure female footballers didn’t have to face male opponents or share changing facilities with men. She accused Football New South Wales of failing ‘to safeguard women and girls for the sake of men’s feelings’, and raised awareness of a women’s team which contained as many as five men.

‘Riley’ Dennis was filmed in 2023 apparently shoving and badly injuring a much smaller female footballer in a video shared by Reduxx. Dennis is a 6’4” American man who claims to be a lesbian. Nearly ten years ago he made several influential YouTube videos claiming men could be lesbians and must be included in lesbian dating preferences. These videos prompted Magdalen Berns to respond with her legendary analysis of Dennis’s demands and how the rights of lesbians were being eroded.

Kirralie Smith, who has also been ordered to apologise publicly to Dennis and Blanch, says she is ‘disappointed that the word “woman” has been redefined to include males and that the words “violence” and “vilification” have been applied to speaking the truth about information in the public domain. Australians should be very concerned about their freedoms.’ She aims to appeal the penalties and needs donations to help her do this.

Maybe not the best organisation to be talking about children and the law?

Despite spending the year being embroiled in paedophile scandals, Pride in Surrey is ending 2025 by writing to children’s organisation Girlguiding and urging it to break the law. Many of the likes were from Lib Dem councillors and other Pride organisations.

Here’s an NHS trainer

This NHS video advises hospitals that cross-dressing men are women and belong in women’s spaces. It was posted on the YouTube channel of St George’s, Epsom and St Helier Group - the same NHS Trust that launched disciplinary action against a nurse for calling a paedophile ‘Mr’. That nurse’s case, which was due to take place this week, was abruptly cancelled.

And finally

There were a couple of stories this week that rather suggest that Pride activism doesn’t really go with global sporting events.

Tottenham Hotspur have a Pride Progress flag on display in the away fans’ section at their stadium, and this has been a problem for them when they play at home in European matches. In 2022 for example, Marseille fans pulled down the flag. This week, Slavia Prague visited and requested in advance that the flag be moved to where some of the Spurs’ fans are, which Tottenham agreed to. This, of course, led to the narrative that anyone who’s opposed to a flag that symbolises transgenderism being imposed on them is a bigot.

The much funnier story though is that Seattle Pride will take place at the end of June next year, which is when the World Cup will be on. As fate would have it, a match is due to be held in Seattle in late June, so it was agreed that the game will be the ‘Pride Match’, featuring ‘celebrations of the LGBTQ+ community’. Then the draw for the World Cup was made, and the match to take place there on that day is Mo Salah’s Egypt versus Iran - two countries where homosexuality is illegal.

The Egyptian Football Association has sent a formal letter to Fifa requesting that the ‘celebrations’ around this group game do not go ahead. However, organisers have said it will still go ahead - partly because the only game that will definitely take place in Seattle featuring two countries where homosexuality is not illegal has already been earmarked to ‘celebrate the end of slavery’.

See you next week!