What does the Supreme Court ruling on trans people mean in practice?
The judgment on sex and gender will have implications for women, trans people, politics and organisations ranging from the NHS to the police.
“The terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”
In fewer than 20 words, Lord Hodge settled a legal debate that has raged in British society for years. It also drove a stake through the heart of a central tenet of the trans lobby — that trans women are women.
The landmark judgment, which was unanimous, is a remarkable victory for For Women Scotland.
The grassroots gender-critical campaign group was set up by three volunteers in 2018 to fight Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to allow Scots to self-declare their legal sex. The fallout from their victory, seven years later, will be felt far further afield.
The issue was whether transgender women with gender-recognition certificates (GRC) who assert that they are female become women in the eyes of the law, and share women’s legal protections. Britain’s top judges have now ruled emphatically that they do not, and the implications for Westminster and beyond will be vast.
Two women celebrating outside the UK Supreme Court after a ruling on the definition of “woman” in the Equality Act 2010.
Push to amend laws
Ministers will come under pressure to amend the Equality Act to reflect the court’s decision, though they may argue that the ruling means they do not need to.
There will be a far bigger question about the Gender Recognition Act, which sets out the framework for granting GRCs but is now being described by campaigners as “essentially defunct” in terms of how it describes a GRC’s application.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission will produce guidance telling organisations that they must apply biological sex when relying on the Equality Act. Organisations from the NHS to the police will have to review their policies to ensure that they are applying the law properly.
Private companies will also need to review their systems, as will sports clubs and bodies that represent professions.
Existing regulations requiring employers to provide separate-sex changing facilities, for example, are likely to mean that women such as the NHS Fife nurse Sandie Peggie will be on far firmer — potentially unshakeable — legal ground when arguing that biological males must be excluded.
Gender-recognition certificates
Until now, trans women with GRCs could be counted in female quotas on public boards and had a presumed right to places on all-women shortlists for political parties. This will no longer be the case. It is also likely that guidance will be given to those who hold GRCs, to set out their rights.
There will be concern in the trans community, who will fear that GRCs — previously seen as weighty legal documents giving those who held them significant new rights — have been reduced to little more than symbols.
A record number of people applied for GRCs in 2023-24. The Gender Recognition Panel received 1,397 applications and, of those, 1,088 were granted. The figure had tripled from 466 applications in 2020-21, after the application fee dropped from £140 to £5. According to a report by Sex Matters in 2024, in the 20 years since the Gender Recognition Act was passed, 8,464 GRCs have been issued, more than a third of them in the past four years.
The mix of applications has also shifted, from 80 per cent applying to be recognised as female and 20 per cent as male in 2009-10, to 50 per cent male and 50 per cent female in 2023-24.
How the ruling affects Labour
What of the government?
Labour has long struggled with questions of sex and gender. Sir Keir Starmer has been scuppered several times when asked by interviewers to define a woman.
In 2021, he was still backing self-identification for trans people and the next year he was unable to say in an interview whether a woman could have a penis. Also in 2022, he gave a quote that would haunt him — that for “99.9 per cent of women, it’s all biology”.
By 2023, the position had hardened and Starmer defined a woman as “an adult female”. Now he says that the court’s definition was one of “common sense” and a Labour source insisted that the prime minister had taken the party from an “activist” stance to a “commonsense position” and that this was “one of the reasons” the electorate had felt that they could back Labour after the “disaster of 2019”.
That will raise eyebrows among people within — and people kicked out of — the party, who felt sidelined when they raised their concerns. Rosie Duffield, the former Labour MP, has accused the party of “gaslighting”.
Could there now be a way back for her under this “changed” Labour Party? She says maybe, and singles out Wes Streeting, the health secretary, as having “always been an ally”. Streeting has implemented a puberty blocker ban for children in the NHS and has said he was wrong in the past to say that trans women were women.
Now, in many ways, the ruling helps Starmer out of a political hole. Rather than wading into a toxic debate, the prime minister can simply defer to judges who have settled a question that most in power have run a mile from.
As Hodge was at pains to stress, trans people still have legal protections as trans people — the ruling means only that they cannot acquire those reserved for women. The real challenge in Westminster will be that government must now ensure public bodies, organisations and Whitehall itself enact the changes and protect same-sex spaces.
The Times
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