UK Supreme Court – latest: Judges rule trans women are not legally women in definition verdict – UK Times

Britain’s equalities watchdog has welcomed the ruling as having addressed challenges around single-sex spaces.

Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said: “Today the Supreme Court ruled that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.

“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.

“As we did not receive the judgment in advance, we will make a more detailed statement once we have had time to consider its implications in full.”

For Women Scotland (FWS) and other campaign groups have hailed the Supreme Court’s judgement today.

After the court unanimously accepted FWS’ appeal, the group wrote on X, they were “absolutely jubilant”, with some in tears.

Campaign group Sex Matters, which had made arguments in the case, said the court had given “the right answer”.

Maya Forstater, the group’s chief executive, said: “We are delighted that the Supreme Court has accepted the arguments of For Women Scotland and rejected the position of the Scottish Government.

“The court has given us the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex – male and female – refers to reality, not to paperwork.”

Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservative Party said:”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 era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end.”Well done to For Women Scotland!”

Mims Davies, the Conservative shadow minister for women , said the Government needed to clarify existing guidance to reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of “woman”.

In a post on X, Ms Davies said: “Huge well done to FWS (For Women Scotland).

“We Conservatives have been warning the Government for months about the preparation they would need to do ahead of this judgement – it’s now time for them to clarify all existing guidance to make sure that public bodies are clear that sex means biological sex.”

She added: “This morning’s decision is important for women right across our country.

“This is a clear victory for common sense – and should never have taken a court case to prove the biological definition of a woman.”

Today, the supreme court ruled: “The terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”

In an 88-page judgment, Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady 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”.

The justices added that interpreting biological sex with GRCs would “cut across the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way”.

They continued: “We can identify no good reason why the legislature should have intended that sex-based rights and protections under the EA 2010 should apply to these complex, heterogenous groupings, rather than to the distinct group of, biological, women and girls, or men and boys, with their shared biology leading to shared disadvantage and discrimination faced by them as a distinct group.”

The decision came after a challenge presented by the For Women Scotland (FWS) group over the inclusion of transgender women with GRCs in the 50 per cent female quota mandated for public boards in Scotland.

The group’s case against the Scottish Government was rejected by judges in Edinburgh in 2022. Its appeal was allowed by the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning. Justices unanimously ruled in FWS’s favour.

After ruling that the Equality Act’s definition of a woman is based on biological sex, Lord Hodge clarified that transgender women still have protection under the 2010 Act.

“As I shall explain later in this hand down speech, the Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender,” he said.

“This is the application of the principle of discrimination by association.

“Those statutory protections are available to transgender people, whether or not they possess a gender recognition certificate.”

In an 88-page ruling, Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler said: “The definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.

“Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men.

“Although the word ‘biological’ does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman.

“These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation.

“Men and women are on the face of the definition only differentiated as a grouping by the biology they share with their group.”