The LGB Alliance, which opposes “new ideologies conflating biological sex with the notion of gender identity and replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender’, thereby erasing same-sex sexual orientation”, was added to the register of charities in England and Wales in April 2021.

Transgender youth charity Mermaids is appealing the regulator’s decision with support from LGBT+ Consortium, Gendered Intelligence, LGBT Foundation, TransActual, and the Good Law Project.

Bindmans has been instructed to act as solicitors, while Michael Gibbon QC and Ted Loveday at Maitland Chambers are acting as counsel.

The Good Law Project’s crowdfunding page for the legal challenge states: “The case is not straightforward. There is very little law about who can challenge a flawed decision to recognise someone as a charity.

“But LGBTQ+ people across the UK face an onslaught of misinformation and attacks in the mainstream press, in politics and on social media. Those carrying out those attacks ought not to be dignified with charitable status – and the attacks should not be subsidised by the tax reliefs available to charities.

“We, the country’s leading LGBTQ+ charities and organisations, speak with the single voice of a single community when we say our community will not be divided. We oppose transphobia in all its forms. We stand together.”