JustRight Scotland

JustRight Scotland (JRS) is a charity founded by human rights lawyers, working with like-minded partners to widen access to justice for people who are marginalised or disadvantaged in Scotland.

Since its launch in 2017, JRS has tackled inequality and discrimination by delivering free, confidential legal advice and representation to people across Scotland through four legal centres:

• The Scottish Women’s Rights Centre (SWRC)
• The Scottish Refugee & Migrant Centre (SMRC)
• The Scottish Anti-Trafficking & Exploitation Centre (SATEC)
• The Scottish Just Law Centre

The Baring Foundation has supported JRS since 2019, awarding funding to launch the Scottish Just Law Centre, which operates a hub model – offering legal advice and expertise to civil society organisations that want to explore using the law as a tool for social change.

Tackling inequality in the law

JustRight Scotland believes in the power of collaboration for every project and in every centre. The legal team works with non-lawyers to pool resources, skills and knowledge to extend the reach and value of their collective work and their multi-sector services approach.

This collaborative approach is part of JustRight Scotland’s core values and permeates each legal case the team takes on.

JustRight Scotland embeds this hub model in each project, including campaigns. For the last year, the team has been working with Maryhill Integration Network to raise awareness about access to higher education for migrant students in Scotland as Access to Education is a Human Right protected by Article 2, Protocol 1 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Court of Session Outer House found that the Scottish Government’s Students’ Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2007 were discriminatory by preventing a category of migrant young people, living lawfully in Scotland since their childhood, from accessing college or university alongside their peers.

The Scottish Just Law Centre raised a Judicial Review on behalf of a client who, although she had completed all of her secondary education in Scotland and was registered as a ‘home student’, had to pay her tuition fee because the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) refused to pay it due to the unlawful ‘long residency’ conditions.

The judge noted that the right to education has been recognised as a fundamental right and is key to the functioning of a democratic society. The operation of the rules was detrimental to both the JRS client and Scottish society. The judge deemed that the ‘long residency’ rules excluded eligibility for student support for individuals – such as JRS client – who had a clear and continuing connection with Scotland, and was discriminatory.

Following the Court’s decision, SAAS had to rethink their eligibility criteria and update the SAAS Payment Scheme. This scheme lowered the residency requirement from 7 years or half a lifetime, to just three years. At the same time, the Scottish Government launched a consultation to collect feedback and comments from the public on the regulations which ran from January to March 2023. JRS submitted its response.

Following the publication of the consultation analysis on the Residency criteria for access to financial support in Further and Higher Education, the Scottish Government announced that tuition fees are now extended to migrant students in Scotland allowing more young people to access higher education.

Even after this successful legal case, the JRS team didn’t stop there.

JRS is still supporting campaigns which highlight the right to have equal access to university funding for migrant students who have made Scotland their home. More information on “Our Grades, Not Visas!” national campaign is available here.

Widening access to justice

The Scottish Just Law Centre has also focused on widening access to justice in relation to equality and human rights across Scotland. One of its focuses over recent years has been equality for trans people in Scotland. The Centre represented Scottish Trans, pro bono (free of charge), in pursuing a legal intervention in the ‘Census’ case in the Outer House of the Court of Session. The Court confirmed that Scottish Ministers acted within their lawful powers by approving trans-inclusive guidance for the ‘sex question’ on the Scottish Census, which allowed trans men and women to self-identify their lived sex for the first time in the 2022 Scottish Census – allowing public services to plan future spending and programmes in a way that reflects the lived experience of trans people in Scotland.

“We work to support individuals and organisations in Scotland to participate in important legal cases by sharing their evidence and experience on issues of discrimination and inequality to make a difference in people’s lives and have a positive impact on the society.”Jen Ang, Director of Development & Policy at JustRight Scotland

Empowering individuals to use the law to defend rights

We also focus on the power of individual collective action to create positive change.

For instance, gaining a qualification for a disabled student in Scotland becomes more important when statistics show that disabled people are more than twice as likely as non-disabled people to have no qualifications (26% compared to 10%).

In this context, we were approached by a group of disabled students in Glasgow for support to challenge their university’s new policy, which imposed a blanket ban on providing extra time for exams to disabled students as a reasonable adjustment – just a week before exams were due to commence. Our team – together with Inclusion Scotland – provided disabled students with a letter template so that they could individually demand reconsideration of this policy.

The template was widely used. As a result, the University reversed its blanket ban before exams started that year – further, the template was shared with students in similar situations at other Scottish Universities.

“Having a law centre that understands discrimination and the importance of accessing justice for disabled people, and supports people to understand the legal system in Scotland is so welcome and valuable”

Heather Fisken, Head of Policy and Research at Inclusion Scotland