Transgender women in the UK will be barred from female bathrooms and sports after a new landmark ruling, an equality chief said today.
This comes after the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of “woman” under the Equality Act 2010 refers specifically to biological sex, effectively excluding trans women from this classification in key areas of the law.
In a unanimous judgment, the court held that the terms “woman” and “s£x” in the Equality Act refer to biological women, sparking celebration among gender-critical campaigners and deep concern among trans rights advocates.
Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner has described yesterday’s ruling as ‘enormously consequential’ and she vowed to pursue organisations that do not update their policies.
On issues such as toilets, changing rooms, and sports, Baroness Falkner echoed the Government in saying the ruling had brought ‘clarity’ to providers on their duties under equality law around single-s£x spaces.
Asked if it was now simple that trans women cannot take part in women’s sport, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Yes, it is.’
On changing rooms and toilets, Baroness Falkner said: ‘Single-sex services like changing rooms must be based on biological sex.’
She said there is no law against organisations providing a third space, such as unisex toilets, and suggested trans rights organisations ‘should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces’.
The commission is expecting to lay an updated statutory code of practice before Parliament by the summer, and has said it is working ‘at pace to incorporate the implications of this judgment’ into the code for public bodies setting out their duties under the Equality Act.
Baroness Falkner said the commission evaluates when the law is not followed by organisations and can speak to those bodies, or ‘use enforcement, compliance tools or whatever, we will be continuing to do that’.
Regarding single-sex hospital wards, she said the NHS will ‘have to change’ their 2019 policy, which says that trans people ‘should be accommodated according to their presentation’.
While the implications of the judgment are still being worked out, today a string of organisations came forward to reveal changes to their policies.
This includes the British Transport Police (BTP), which said it had adopted a new ‘interim position’ which will see trans people held in custody searched by an officer in line with their birth s£x.
Businesses will likely have to review and change policies, including on toilets, in light of the Supreme Court ruling, according to lawyer Peter Byrne, head of employment law at Slater and Gordon.
He said: ‘Lots of businesses are going to have to redraft policies around same-sex toilets.’
He said that while previously an employee might have been asked which toilet they felt comfortable using, ‘that option is probably going to disappear’.
‘My personal view is, in reality you’re going to end up asking them to use disabled toilets,’ he added.
