SNP ministers spent nearly £400,000 of taxpayers' money on legal fees arguing that transgender women should have access to female-only toilets, receipts obtained by the Scottish Tories have revealed.
The Scottish Government spent more than £216,000 fighting the case in Scotland's highest civil court and almost £160,000 on their failed case at the Supreme Court.
The legal battle against feminist group For Women Scotland (FWS) culminated in the UK's highest court ruling that trans women are not women, overturning previous decisions in the Scottish courts.
The total bill currently stands at just under £374,000, with final costs "still being determined".
Scottish First Minister and SNP leader John Swinney during Edinburgh Pride
PA
The legal battle began in 2022 when FWS successfully challenged Scottish Government legislation aimed at increasing the proportion of women on public boards, which included trans women.
The Court of Session ruled that changing the definition of a woman exceeded Holyrood's powers.
Ministers then issued revised advice stating the definition only included trans women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
FWS launched another court action arguing it should be limited to biological women.
This was rejected by the Court of Session's Outer House in December 2022, with FWS appealing to the court's Inner House in November 2023, before taking their case to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ultimately overturned the previous rulings, finding that the definition of woman for the purposes of the Equality Act is based on biological sex.
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Protesters took to the streets of Scotland after the Supreme Court rulingPADespite this definitive ruling, SNP Ministers have failed to act by ordering Scotland's public sector bodies to change their policies.
Public bodies across Scotland have not been directed to stop allowing biological males who self-identify as women to access female-only areas, despite the court's clear decision.
First Minister John Swinney has advised public bodies to wait for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to publish guidance in the summer, even though the watchdog has warned that the court ruling takes immediate effect.
Tess White, the Scottish Shadow Equalities Minister, criticised the SNP's handling of the case.
Scottish First Minister John Swinney has refused to define a woman PAShe said: "It will rightly stick in the throat of taxpayers that they are picking up a huge legal tab for the SNP's needless and humiliating court defeat."
White added: "John Swinney's party threw good money after bad in a doomed attempt to defend their reckless gender policy which betrayed women."
Condemning Swinney's Government over its inaction following the Supreme Court ruling, White concluded: "Yet, even now, John Swinney won't apologise or issue a new directive to public sector bodies which adopted self-ID wholesale on their legal requirement to protect single-sex spaces.
"That negligence leaves the taxpayer wide open to huge compensation payouts."
