Trans women are not legally women under the Equality Act, the Supreme Court has ruled in a landmark judgment.
Campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) brought a series of challenges – including to the UK’s highest court – over the definition of “woman” in Scottish legislation mandating 50 per cent female representation on public boards.
On Wednesday, five judges from the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex, in a decision that could have wide-ranging ramifications for trans women’s rights to use services and spaces reserved for women.
It means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.
Gender critical rights campaigners have hailed the ruling as a victory for biological women that will protect single-sex spaces, with FWS saying they were “absolutely jubilant” about the result.
But trans rights groups have reacted with dismay, warning that it will “exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society”.
jane fae, director of trans campaign group TransActual, argued society will “divide more sharply into queer-friendly and queer-hostile spaces” as a result of the ruling, adding that it will “be the poorer for it”.
“The entire trans community is devastated,” the campaigner told The Independent. “Irrespective of the small print on this ruling, the intent seems clear: to exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society.
“This morning, we are feeling very alone. That, though, is today. We have come through worse before and trans people are not going away. Whatever the non-trans world throws at us, we will be back, each time, stronger than before.”
Labour for Trans Rights have called the Supreme Court’s decision “hugely disappointing”, arguing that it came as a result of “ceaseless lobbying from a well-funded anti-trans network”.
The group said: “Labour must not follow the example of Donald Trump, and must instead protect the Equality Act, one of Labour’s proudest pieces of legislation, and its legal protections for trans people.
“The Labour Party must stand firmly behind the LGBT+ community.”
Meanwhile, transgender rights campaign group TransLucent said: “Many in the trans community will be extremely worried by this decision and its implications”.
“We would like to reassure them that they are still protected from discrimination, victimisation and harassment because of their protected characteristic of gender reassignment,” they added in a statement.
The dispute centres on whether someone with a GRC recognising their gender as female should be treated as a woman under the UK 2010 Equality Act.
FWS has previously said not tying the definition of sex to its “ordinary meaning” could have far-reaching consequences for sex-based rights, as well as “everyday single-sex services” such as toilets and hospital wards.
But lawyers for the Scottish Government told the Supreme Court at a hearing in November that a person with a GRC is “recognised in law” as having changed sex.
In their ruling on Wednesday, justices at the UK’s highest court unanimously ruled in FWS’s favour.
In the wake of the verdict, the government reaffirmed its support for the “protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex”, with women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson saying the ruling brings “clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs”.
“Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government,” she added.
But Rosie Duffield, an outspoken critic of Labour’s position on trans rights, accused the government of “gaslighting”.
The gender critical MP, who quit the Labour Party last year, told Times Radio the party had “actively blocked women from promotion” if they questioned the rights of trans people “to enter our spaces”.
Officials have confirmed the NHS is now looking at updating its official guidance on same-sex wards to reflect the ruling, which currently says trans people “should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use”.
In an 88-page judgment, Lord Hodge, sitting with Lords Reed and Lloyd-Jones alongside Ladies Rose and Simler, said that while the word “biological” does not appear in the definition of man or woman in the Equality Act, “the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman”.
They argued that transgender people are still protected from discrimination under the act, but that “gender reassignment and sex are separate bases for discrimination and inequality”.
The ruling was welcomed by Britain’s equalities watchdog which argued it successfully addressed challenges around single-sex spaces.
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said: “We are pleased that this judgment addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations.”
Meanwhile, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch used the ruling to launch a political attack on the prime minister, saying: “The era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end.
“Saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact, and now isn’t true in law either. This is a victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious. Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex.”
The prime minister has faced repeated questions over his definition of a woman in the five years since he became Labour leader, amid an increasingly heated debate over transgender rights.
Labour has promised to “modernise, simplify, and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law to a new process”, pledging to “remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance”.
However, the prime minister has also previously said trans women with GRC “don’t have [the] right” to enter women-only spaces, adding that “biological women’s spaces need to be protected”.
