THE CHARITY THEY TRIED TO ERASE

LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 to campaign for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals on the basis of biological sex. Its position placed it in direct conflict with Stonewall, Mermaids and other organisations that treated transgender rights as part of the same movement.

In April 2021, the Charity Commission registered LGB Alliance as a charity. The decision did not shield the organisation from criticism, but it confirmed that the regulator considered its stated purposes charitable and for the public benefit.

Mermaids appealed against that decision. Good Law Project supported and crowdfunded the case alongside several LGBT organisations. Its campaign page alleged that LGB Alliance principally existed to denigrate transgender people, described its objectives as "reprehensible" and announced that it was supporting action to strip the organisation of its charitable status.

The legal challenge reinforced a verdict already circulating publicly: that LGB Alliance was not merely controversial, but illegitimate. Its founders were routinely accused of transphobia, events involving the group attracted protests, and its charitable status was treated as something obtained improperly rather than a decision reached by the statutory regulator.

The case reached the First-tier Tribunal in 2022. LGB Alliance later said that defending itself had cost more than £250,000, raised largely through small donations—money it argued could otherwise have funded its services.

On 6 July 2023, the tribunal dismissed the appeal. It ruled that Mermaids did not have legal standing to challenge the Charity Commission's decision. LGB Alliance retained its charitable status.

The ruling was not a complete adjudication of the underlying dispute. The two tribunal judges were unable to agree on whether LGB Alliance would have qualified as a charity had Mermaids possessed standing. No finding of comprehensive vindication followed, but nor was the Charity Commission's decision overturned. The regulator maintained that it had applied the law carefully and properly.

Good Law Project acknowledged that the challenge had failed, while continuing to defend its decision to support it.

This was not a criminal prosecution and no conviction was ever in prospect. But the mechanism was familiar: a campaign presented an organisation as morally disqualified before the legal threshold for challenging its status had even been met.

After two years of litigation, the attempt to remove LGB Alliance from the register failed. The public label proved harder to remove.

SOURCES