In a historic ruling on Wednesday, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court held that the Equality Act 2010’s legal definition of “woman” is strictly a biological female. The unanimous decision explained that transwomen, despite having gender recognition certificates, are not women for gender-based equality protections.
“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,” stated Justice Patrick Hodge as he delivered the ruling.
That was a ruling resulting from a 2018 law enacted by the Scottish Parliament mandating 50 per cent representation of women on Scottish public body boards. The law defined transwomen as women, a definition now ruled incompatible with the Equality Act by the court.
Equality Act Provides Protection — But Specifies Sex as Binary
The Supreme Court highlighted the fact that while transgender people enjoy strong legal safeguards, such as against discrimination and harassment, those rights are secured under the characteristic of gender reassignment, and not sex.
“The Equality Act 2010 protects transgender people, not only against discrimination via the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, and harassment in substance in their acquired gender,” Hodge explained.
The court pointed out that making sex “certified sex” would weaken the coherence and clarity of the law by creating mixed or “heterogeneous” groups.
“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,” said the ruling. “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.”
Women’s Rights Group Welcomes Ruling
For Women Scotland, the women’s rights organisation, welcomed the decision confirming their view, which had been held since the very start, that women are protected on the grounds of their biological sex.
“This has been a really, really long road. Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex,” said the organisation.
“Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling.”
