THE Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) is being sued by one of its executives for discriminating against her gender-critical beliefs.
The Sunday Times reports that Claire Methven O’Brien, who was appointed to the Scottish human rights watchdog in 2022, is taking legal action against it.
O’Brien will be represented by Margaret Gribbon, the same lawyer who represented Sandie Peggie when she sued NHS Fife.
Peggie complained about sharing a changing room with transgender medic Dr Beth Upton and alleged that the Equality Act 2010 had been breached by allowing Upton to use female changing facilities.
All of Peggie's claims against Upton were dismissed – as well as the bulk of her claims against the health board. The tribunal ruled that NHS Fife had “harassed” Peggie after she complained.
Gribbon, a solicitor at McGrade & Co, said: “I confirm that we are instructed to represent Dr Claire Methven O’Brien in an ongoing employment tribunal claim against the SHRC in which she alleges she has been discriminated against and harassed for holding gender-critical beliefs.”
O’Brien, a reader in law at Dundee University, was appointed to the SHRC by the Scottish Parliament.
In an article in Holyrood magazine in February 2025, O’Brien wrote in regards to Peggie’s case: “Requiring women – or for that matter men – to expose their naked bodies before members of the opposite sex as a condition of accessing employment, education, other public or private commercial services is without shadow of a doubt a breach of privacy, dignity, decency and human rights.
“No putative right of individuals asserting transgender identities negates this, whatever lobbyists may claim.”
O’Brien adds that when she joined the SHRC, she requested the organisation's submission to the Scottish Parliament on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill be reviewed, but she was “outvoted”. She claimed that a decision was made “to postpone publication of minutes reflecting this until after the GRR was enacted”.
“Before debate closed on the bill, I wrote to Holyrood’s Equalities Committee to alert them. No member answered,” O’Brien added.
“The response my intervention did secure was to have complaints made against me by staff and fellow commissioners.”
The SHRC welcomed the proposals in the GRR bill to allow transgender people in Scotland to self-identify.
It argued that the bill, “if passed, will represent a significant step forward in removing barriers to the exercise of human rights for trans people in Scotland".
O’Brien has repeatedly spoken publicly about her gender-critical beliefs, and earlier this year criticised plans to ban LGBT conversion therapy.
“You might be considered guilty of conversion practices, in SNP-speak, just for failing to affirm someone else’s belief that they have changed or can change their sex,” she wrote.
A spokesperson for the SHRC said: “The Scottish Human Rights Commission is co-operating fully with the Tribunal regarding this matter. We cannot make any further public statement while the Tribunal proceedings are live.”
