From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
Britain’s Supreme Court, yesterday, ruled that trans women do not fall within the legal definition of women under Britain’s equality legislation.
The novel ruling, which categorised the legal definition of a woman as based on biological sex, became a blow to people who had been campaigning for transgender rights.
Following the judgement, there were indications that the ruling would have far-reaching consequences for the operation of single-sex services like domestic violence shelters, as well as to equal pay claims and maternity policies.
The judgement is also a sequel to the heightened public debate over the intersection of transgender rights and women’s rights.
The Supreme Court said its ruling meant that trans women would receive the law’s protections under the category of “gender reassignment” rather than sex.
“However, the five judges involved in the ruling emphasised that they were not commenting more broadly on whether trans women are women, saying it was not the role of the court to adjudicate on the meaning of gender or sex. Instead, the judgement is limited to the precise meaning of language in the 2010 Equality Act, which aims to prevent discrimination.
“The decision will likely be welcome news for Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. Some legal scholars had theorised that the court might refuse to rule and, instead, force his government to weigh in on a thorny and divisive issue. The government said, in a statement,yesterday, that it had always supported the protection of “single-sex spaces based on biological sex” and that the ruling brought “clarity and confidence” around the provision of services in hospitals, domestic violence shelters and sports clubs,” the New York Times stated.
The New York Times also reported that although the case was focused on the legal definition of women, it also applied to trans men because the Supreme Court ruled on the broader meaning of “sex” as being “biological sex” under the Equality Act 2010.
Delivering the judgement, Lord Hodge, said: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex.”
Hodge also said: “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.”
He added that the ruling “does not cause disadvantage to trans people” because they continued to have protections against discrimination under another part of the Equality Act.
The act includes a range of “protected characteristics,” which include race, religion and disability.
Hodge acknowledged the fraught national conversation about transgender rights, and described trans people as a “vulnerable and often harassed minority,” while noting that women had long fought for equal rights with men.
“It is not the task of this court to make policy on how the interests of these groups should be protected,” he stated, while further saying the task is “to ascertain the meaning of the legislation which Parliament has enacted,” Hodge further said.
Commenting on the development, the Co-director of For Women Scotland, the activist group that had brought the legal challenge, Susan Smith, said the judgment would ensure that “services and spaces designated for women are for women.”
She added: “Everybody should be protected by the Equality Act. This is not about prejudice or bigotry, as some people would say, it’s not about hatred for another community. It’s just about saying that there are differences, and biology is one of those differences, and we just need protections based on that.”
Also, groups that campaigned for trans rights expressed concern, but also appealed for a calm and careful assessment of what the court’s ruling did and did not change.