Anti-trans activist J.K. Rowling is using the vast wealth she has accumulated through the success of her Harry Potter franchise to personally fund legal cases aimed at diminishing rights and protections for transgender women in the U.K. and Ireland.

Last weekend, a spokesperson for Rowling confirmed to The Daily Mail that the author’s JK Rowling Women’s Fund (JKRWF) has been quietly operating since late 2024, managing “her ongoing financial support for legal cases involving women’s and girls’ sex-based rights.”  

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The organization notes on its website that it “is a private fund, not a charity or a trust, and does not accept donations.”

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Replying to supporters on X who expressed interest in donating to JKRWF last week, Rowling confirmed that she is personally funding the organization.

“I looked into all options and a private fund is the most efficient, streamlined way for me to do this,” she wrote in a May 24 post. “Lots of people are offering to contribute, which I truly appreciate, but there are many other women’s rights orgs that could do with the money, so donate away, just not to me!”

According to its website, JKRWF “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.” Its goal is to bankroll cases that will “make legal precedents” and “force policy change.”

While JKRWF says it does not provide legal representation, it aims to pay for such representation for cisgender women who “have lost their livelihoods or are facing tribunals” due to their anti-trans beliefs, as well as individuals and organizations that are “being forced to comply with unreasonable inclusion policies regarding single sex spaces and services, or female-only clubs and events” or “are challenging legislation which takes away the freedoms or protections [cisgender] women are entitled to.”

The establishment of the fund is Rowling’s latest move in her crusade against trans women’s rights in the U.K. The author made headlines in February 2024 when she pledged a £70,000 (about $89,000) donation to For Women Scotland (FWS), the anti-trans organization behind the legal challenge that resulted in the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling last month that the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.”

More recently, Rowling appears to have become particularly fixated on ensuring that incarcerated trans women in the U.K. are housed in men’s facilities. “Of course I’d give financial backing to any woman who wanted to sue because she suffered detriments through being incarcerated with a [transgender woman],” she wrote in a May 21 X post.

While JKRWF has reportedly been operating since late 2024, news of the organization only recently began circulating on social media.

“JK Rowling has emerged from the shadows as a funder of the anti-feminist biology is destiny movement,” Jolyon Maugham, founder and director of Good Law Project and a trans rights advocate, wrote in a May 24 Bluesky post, adding in that “money she has earned from selling her books to children will be used to harm trans children.”

News of Rowling’s anti-trans legal fund comes as HBO announced the cast of its upcoming Harry Potter reboot. According to Deadline, the author retains creative control over any adaptation of her massively successful children’s books and will be an executive producer on the new series. Casey Bloys, HBO’s gay CEO, has repeatedly dismissed concerns about Rowling’s involvement in the series in light of her virulently anti-trans advocacy, most recently telling The Town’s Matt Belloni that Rowling is “entitled” to “her personal political views.”

According to The Guardian, the Harry Potter franchise is worth an estimated $25 billion. In a May 28 Bluesky post, Maugham wondered how much of that vast fortune Rowling would spend “oppressing a minoritised group she doesn’t like?”

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