UK supreme court rules definition of woman in Equality Act refers to ‘a biological woman’ – live
Supreme Court rules definition of woman in Equality Act refers to ‘biological women’
The definition of a woman and sex in the Equality Act relates to “a biological woman and biological sex”, the supreme court has ruled as it unanimously allowed an appeal from gender critical campaign group For Women Scotland.
Key events
The UK supreme court decision is a “victory for women across the United Kingdom”, the leader of the Scottish Tories has said.
Russell Findlay hailed the decision, which confirmed that the definition of woman in the 2010 Equality Act refers to biological women, as an “abject humiliation for the SNP”.
Findlay said:
This is a victory for women across the United Kingdom, a victory for common sense – and an abject humiliation for the SNP.
John Swinney now needs to respect women’s rights and get rid of the dangerous gender policies which have become embedded in Scotland’s public institutions.
This ruling should sound the death knell once and for all for Nicola Sturgeon’s reckless self-ID plans, which Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens shamefully backed to the hilt at Holyrood.
John Swinney must stop obsessing about gender and get back to the day job of delivering better public services and a stronger economy.
The equalities watchdog for Great Britain welcomed the ruling as having addressed challenges around single-sex spaces.
Kishwer Falkner, chair 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.
Supreme court ruling brings ‘clarity and confidence’, says government spokesperson
The supreme court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act brings “clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs”, a government spokesperson has said, reports the PA news agency.
Reacting to the supreme court ruling, a government spokesperson said:
We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex.
This 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.
The supreme court judgment in the For Women Scotland appeal against the Scottish government rules the certificated sex interpretation would have “rendered meaningless” a section of the 2010 Equalities Act dealing with protection from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
This interpretation would mean “a trans woman (a biological male) with a GRC (gender recognition certificate)(so legally female) who remains sexually oriented to other females would become a same-sex attracted female, in other words, a lesbian” and would lead to an “inevitable loss of autonomy and dignity for lesbians” as well as affecting lesbian clubs and associations.
The judgment continues:
Read fairly, references to sex in this provision can only mean biological sex. People are not sexually oriented towards those in possession of a certificate.
Ruling does not diminish transgender women’s protections against direct discrimination, says supreme court
The ruling by the supreme court that “woman” in the Equality Act (EA) 2010 refers to biological women does not diminish transgender women’s protections against direct discrimination, the judges have said.
In their judgment, Lord Reed, Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler said:
A man who identifies as a woman who is treated less favourably because of the protected characteristic of gender reassignment will be able to claim on that basis.
A man who identifies as a woman who is treated less favourably not because of being trans (the protected characteristic of gender reassignment) but because of being perceived as being a woman will be able to claim for direct sex discrimination on that basis.
This does not entail any practical disadvantage and there is no discordance (as the Scottish ministers appear to suggest) between the individual’s position in society and the ability to claim on this basis.
A certificated sex reading of the EA 2010 is not necessary here, and the approach applies equally whether or not the claimant has a gender recognition certificate.
The LGB Alliance charity said the ruling “marks a watershed for women”.
According to the PA news agency, chief executive Kate Barker said:
The ruling confirms that the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ refer to same-sex sexual orientation and makes it absolutely clear that lesbians wishing to form associations of any size are lawfully entitled to exclude men – whether or not they possess a GRC (gender recognition certificate).
It is difficult to express the significance of this ruling: it marks a watershed for women and, in particular, lesbians who have seen their rights and identities steadily stolen from them over the last decade.
Barker said the supreme court ruling “delivers huge benefits to women and to lesbians”.
She told the PA news agency:
This is a victory for biology, for common sense, for reality.
It’s definitely a victory for lesbians as well, and it was specifically mentioned in the case how lesbians have been disadvantaged by this idea that maybe a man could be a woman and could be a lesbian if he had a certificate, and the ruling just absolutely blew that out of the water.
It was really fair, it was really clear and it delivers huge benefits to women and to lesbians in particular, so I’m absolutely we’re all thrilled about it.
Barker said the ruling would cut out a lot of expensive and time-consuming court cases in the future “because it sets a clear precedent”.
On the provision of single-sex services, the written supreme court judgment on the For Women Scotland appeal against the Scottish government gives examples including rape or domestic violence counselling, domestic violence refuges, rape crisis centres, female-only hospital wards and changing rooms.
It states:
Read fairly and in context, the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex.
It adds:
It is fanciful (even perverse) to think that any reasonable objection to the presence of a person of the opposite sex could be grounded in (gender recognition certificate) GRC status or that a confidential GRC could make any difference at all.
Kemi Badenoch calls supreme court ruling a ‘victory’
Kemi Badenoch has lauded as a “victory” the supreme court ruling that “woman” in equality law refers to biological women.
According to the PA news agency, the Conservative party leader 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!
Here are some images coming in via the newswires from outside the supreme court in London today after a ruling on the legal definition of a woman was delivered:
The supreme court justices also said that using a “certificated” interpretation of sex would create “an odd inequality of status” between trans people who have a gender reassignment certificate (GRC) and trans people who do not, with “no obvious means of distinguishing between the two groups”.
Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler said:
We can see no good reason why the legislature should have intended that people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment should be regarded and treated differently under the EA 2010 depending on whether or not they possess a confidential certificate, even though in many, if not most cases there will be no material distinction in their personal characteristics, either as regards gender identity or appearance, or as to how they are perceived or treated by others or society at large.
Mims Davies, the Conservative shadow minister for women at Westminster, said the government needed to clarify existing guidance to reflect the supreme court’s ruling on gender, reports the PA news agency.
In a post on X, 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 judgment – 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.
We Conservatives, Claire Coutinho, (and) Kemi Badenoch had been pushing the government for many months to grip this situation and publish clear updated guidance. Now that we have legal clarity, ministers must do this without delay.
As minister for women and equalities, Kemi Badenoch started a call for evidence for examples of where bad guidance was misinterpreting the law – the government should use that work to make the guidance clear and certain so that the dignity, privacy and safety of women and girls is respected and crucially protected.
Doing so will ensure safety, fairness and equality.
For Women Scotland (FWS) and Sex Matters have reacted to today’s UK supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman.
On X, FWS wrote:
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas #WeKnowWhatAWomanIs #SupremeCourt
Sex Matters posted a video with the words “it’s a win” on it, alongside this message:
We are delighted that For Women Scotland has been successful in its appeal to the supreme court, and that the position of the Scottish government has been rejected.
The court has given the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex – male and female – refers to reality, not paperwork.
The group then followed up with the below on X:
We are hugely grateful to For Women Scotland for bringing this case.
At great personal cost, they have provided women in the UK with essential clarity about the way equality law works.
Their bravery cannot be overstated. It’s been a long road and we have been proud to intervene on their side in the supreme court along with the lesbian intervenors.
The judges continued in their written ruling:
A certificated sex interpretation would cut across the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way.
References to a ‘woman’ and ‘women’ as a group sharing the protected characteristic of sex would include all females of any age, irrespective of any other protected characteristic, and those trans women, biological men, who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and a GRC, and who are therefore female as a matter of law.
The same references would necessarily exclude men of any age, but they would also exclude some, biological, women living in the male gender with a GRC, trans men who are legally male.
The converse position would apply to references to ‘man’ and ‘men’ as a group sharing the same protected characteristic.
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, heterogeneous 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.
Delivering the judgment of the UK supreme court, Judge Lord Hodge said the “central question” is how the words “woman” and “sex” are defined in the 2010 Equality Act.
He said:
Do these terms refer to biological woman or biological sex, or is a woman to be interpreted as extending to a trans woman with a Gender Recognition Certificate?
The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.
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.
During the supreme court ruling, Lord Hodge, sitting with Lords Reed and Lloyd-Jones alongside Ladies Rose and Simler, said the “central question” is how the words “woman” and “sex” are defined in the 2010 Equality Act.
He continued:
The terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
During the hearing in November, Aidan O’Neill KC, for For Women Scotland (FWS), told justices the Scottish ministers’ position that sex, man and woman in the Equality Act refer to “certificated sex” – as the sex on a person’s birth certificate whether or not amended by a gender recognition certificate (GRC) – is “just wrong and should be rejected by the court”, reports the PA news agency.
But Ruth Crawford KC, for the Scottish government, said a person who becomes a woman “in consequence of a GRC” is entitled to those protections “just as much as others enjoy those protections who are recorded as a woman at birth”.
She also said the “inevitable conclusion” of the FWS challenge, if it were successful, would be that trans women with GRCs would “remain men until death for the purposes of the Equality Act”.
The court was also told that since the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, 8,464 people in the UK had obtained a GRC.
When opening the supreme court judgment on the appeal by For Women Scotland over the legal definition of woman, Lord Reed called on all parties to respect the “dignity” of the court.
He said:
Some people will be pleased and others will be disappointed.
Whatever your feeling may be, please respect the dignity of these courts and remain silent until the court is adjourned.
Lord Hodge then began delivering the judgment.
Lord Hodge: ruling should not be considered a triumph of one group over another
UK supreme court judge Lord Hodge, who delivered the ruling today, said:
The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
But we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not.”
Scottish Trans has reacted to the UK supreme court ruling, urging people “not to panic”. On Bluesky, the charity, wrote:
FWS have won their case against the Scottish government. We will be reading the judgment as quickly as possible so we can properly understand what the court has decided today.
We’d urge people not to panic – there will be lots of commentary coming out quickly that is likely to deliberately overstate the impact that this decision is going to have on all trans people’s lives. We’ll say more as soon as we’re able to. Please look out for yourselves and each other today.
