NHS nurse's trans ruling to be revised after vital evidence 'made-up by AI'

Maya Forstater, who leads the sex-based rights organisation Sex Matters, stated that a quote attributed to her own tribunal proceedings was entirely fictitious.

"The source needs to be investigated and they need to ask Judge Kemp where it came from," Ms Forstater said.

She suggested AI may have been responsible for generating the non-existent passage, adding: "We deserve an explanation and that might be one."

The original judgment, delivered on Monday, determined that the experienced nurse had been harassed by NHS Fife after raising concerns about sharing a female-only changing area with a transgender doctor.

However, the tribunal rejected Mrs Peggie's claims of discrimination, indirect discrimination and victimisation.

Judge Alexander Kemp concluded that it was "not inherently unlawful" for a man to use a women's changing room, a position that appeared at odds with the Supreme Court's earlier ruling this year.

The highest court had established that references to "sex", "man" and "woman" within the Equality Act relate to biological sex.

Despite this, Judge Kemp argued that nothing in the legislation explicitly stated that the protected characteristic of womanhood "takes precedence" over transgender status.

To bolster his reasoning, Judge Kemp had cited what he claimed was a passage from the Forstater tribunal stating: "It is important to bear in mind that the [Equality Act 2010] does not create a hierarchy of protected characteristics."

This quotation has now been replaced in the amended ruling with an entirely different excerpt discussing whether those holding gender-critical views can misgender transgender individuals without consequence.

The revised judgment maintains that this new citation supports the same proposition about protected characteristics not forming a hierarchy.

When asked to clarify how the original fabricated quote came to be included, a Judicial Office spokeswoman declined to elaborate, stating that judges communicate through their judgments and no commentary would be offered on specific cases.

Dr Michael Foran, a gender law expert at Oxford University, raised serious doubts about whether the tribunal possessed the authority to make such significant alterations.

"It is an incontrovertible fact that the judgment includes supposed quotes from specific judgments that do not appear in those judgments," he said. "That in itself is extraordinary."

He noted that the power to reissue judgments is typically restricted to correcting clerical mistakes and accidental omissions, not changes of this scale.

Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service guidelines from October explicitly warn that AI tools may "hallucinate", fabricating fictitious cases, citations or quotes.

The guidance states that judicial office holders bear personal responsibility for material produced in their name.

Speaking at a press conference with her legal team after the proceedings, Ms Peggie announced she would seek an appeal against the employment tribunal ruling in her case against NHS Fife.

Her solicitor Margaret Gribbon confirmed: "The tribunal’s judgment will be appealed and work on this is already underway.”

Ms Peggie said: “I am not a campaigner and I had never heard of the phrase gender critical when I first raised complaints over two years ago about my employer’s decision to allow men into female-only changing rooms.

“I just knew instinctively that it wasn’t right that women were expected to undress in front of men in private spaces, and I still believe this to be the case,.” she continued,

The nurse said she was “delighted” at the tribunal’s finding that she had been harassed by NHS Fife, but added: “Their judgment, I believe, falls short in many respects and that is why I certainly won’t be giving up this legal fight any time soon.”

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