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As it stands, I think there are insufficient protections and there is a need for further legislation and clarity about when you can exclude by sex and when you can exclude by gender. And we need to clarify sex/gender protections across a range of legislation. The SC can't do that though.

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It's not feasible in everyday life - someone with a GRC gets a revised birth certificate anyway. And it's not like you can put a security guard on every toilet demanding a hormone test before you allow in any suspiciously tall woman.

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You're clearly very angry, and I agree this decision makes very clear that there are insufficient protections for trans and gender non conforming individuals. But I don't think the Supreme Court could have decided otherwise, based on the constraints they perceive themselves as bound by.

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The question was whether the GRA was implicitly excluded, which can be done under s9(3) GRA. In order to keep consistency across the whole Act, it must have been implicitly excluded. I agree, the arguments on lesbian spaces poor - but other arguments are, like gender-affected sport.

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They weren't the unique hinge, but they were a very clear indicator. The Inner House suggested that woman would be interpreted in different ways in different parts of the Act, which the SC said is unacceptable. I don't think it was a reversion to the 1975 definition - it never changed.

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I'm not sure I understand this point - where in the GRA are you referring to? This is noted extensively in the SC decision, where they use 9(3) to reason that the GRA must be excluded by virtue of the incoherence of interpreting it as including those with a GRC.

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The thing is post-op is not a legal status. GRC is a legal status, and doesn't require operative intervention. That means you can have two biologically identical people, one with a GRC and one without, who if they got pregnant, would have different protections, which is untenable.

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That means we need to introduce new legislation which considers the overlap between sex and gender protections because the definition in the SDA, and thus the EA, fails to protect many trans and enby people.

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If only 'biological women' can get pregnant, but legal men can get pregnant then the maternity protections must apply to biological sex, not legal sex (or we leave trans men without protections). For consistency, all references to woman/sex in the EA must therefore mean biological sex.

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I don't think the limited characters of BlueSky posts are enough to discuss this. The SC judgment refers to 'biological sex', which generally matches sex assigned at birth. Not everyone assigned female at birth can or does get pregnant, but *only* those afab can get pregnant.

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Aislinn @aislinnoc.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I didn’t say it was intuitive. Being menopausal or post hysterectomy doesn’t change what sex you were assigned at birth though. And it’s unlikely that it was contemplated when the SDA was being implemented, so it’s not for the SC to critique what Parliament contemplated when they enacted it.

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I've never seen a more accurate description of this...

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Reposted by Aislinn

News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Israel has dropped more bombs in Gaza than fell on London, Dresden & Hamburg combined during WWII [𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘈𝘧𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴]. Read that & consider that Gaza is, on average, only 5 miles wide & 25 miles in length. Life expectancy has dropped from 75.5 years in 2023 to 40.6 years now [𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘵]. Genocide.

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Again, as I said, there's a need for clearer legislation which doesn't rely on sex assigned at birth - so that gender isn't associated with reproductive organs. But the legislation, as it stands, does do that.

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But there's a capacity to include trans women in single-sex spaces, provided it's reasonable and proportionate. For a surgically and medically transitioned trans woman, it would be reasonable and proportionate to include her in single-sex spaces. We need new legislation anyway - what about enbies?

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But the argument made in favour of retaining the lower court decisions then leads to inconsistency in interpretation within the statute itself, if we don't want to leave trans men without maternity protections. Yes, they're a very small minority, but that can't have been Parliament's intention.

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Honestly, I agree - I do think there's a need to reform the legislation to make this clearer. But that wasn't for the Supreme Court to do - it's a job for Parliament.

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TJ McIntyre @tjmcintyre.com · 24/04/2025

It's not the only example they use for determining whether it means sex assigned at birth - just the only one I listed. It's discussed in part 15 of the judgment (paras 166-88), where they look at various provisions, including the incoherence of differentiating between a trans person with/out a GRC.

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Reposted by Aislinn

There has been a sharp rise in censorship of pro-Palestinian voices on Meta platforms. 7amleh is collecting evidence from European users about content takedowns, shadow banning, and account suspensions on Instagram or Facebook. Click here if you've experienced this form.jotform.com/250692597434...

Image asking for data about online censorship targeting pro-Palestine posts on Facebook and Instagram.

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Thread has a second half here: bsky.app/profile/aisl...

And reach out to your trans and nb friends and colleagues - make your support visible. We see you. We stand with you. We fight by your side.

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Supreme Court win | Baroness Kishwer Falkner on Radio 4

The statements by Baroness Falkner on Radio 4 (available here: youtu.be/jaR0tbIGe0E?...) about blanket exclusions are likely to be overreaching and so watch out for the opportunity to give comment on any draft guidance.

youtu.be

YouTube video by Sex Matters

And we’re really not doing great at providing spaces - like bathrooms and changing rooms - which are single occupancy and enclosed. Arguing for that would avoid pearl clutching either way.

The wording of the Equality Act is wildly outdated - it refers to ‘transsexual’, which is really not what we want to be using. Gender recognition certificates are only available if you intend to change gender from M to F or F to M - we’ve got nothing for enbies.

Argue for rephrasing the pregnancy and post-pregnancy protections to include trans men bearing children, to avoid dysphoria about ‘maternity’ protections.

More generally, this judgment also gives us a clear list of points where the law needs to be amended - sex is interpreted in the Act as entirely binary. This excludes intersex people. Because sex is interpreted as binary, gender is too - this excludes non-binary pals. Argue for their inclusion.

There are circumstances in which trans individuals can be excluded - and that’s okay. As a white woman, I expect to be excluded from support meetings for victims of racism and racial discrimination. But I don’t expect to be excluded from conversations about race generally. There is nuance here.

If you’re active in sports, ask for a nuanced position on trans inclusion, not just a blanket ban. Fight back against knee jerk reactions of banning or excluding trans participants.

If you’re a trans ally, make this point to the places you go. Argue that it would be unreasonable to force trans people to out themselves as trans by using the bathroom for their sex at birth. Argue that policies on searches should allow for flexibility. Be clear that you support our trans siblings.

To return to my thread, now that I’m full of food. What does this mean in practice for the trans and trans ally community? While it is possible to exclude trans people from single sex spaces, this should only be done when it is reasonable and proportionate.

It’s lunch time. I’ll come back to this with more thoughts after I’ve eaten!

Similarly, you can regulate trans people in gender affected sports, if it’s necessary in the interests of fair competition or the safety of competitors. Does that justify a blanket ban for all trans competitors? Probably not. It would allow regulation of testosterone levels though.

Well. It’s not quite as cut and dry as ‘trans women are not women.’ (Which I don’t believe, btw) You can exclude trans people from single sex spaces, without it being discriminatory, if that is “reasonable and proportionate”. So for a bathroom with cubicles, is that reasonable and proportionate?

In particular, it’s not great because for someone who is trans, this leaves them with bladder infections because they can’t use the bathroom of their gender, and they likely don’t want to use the bathroom of their sex assigned at birth. And where are they meant to change for the swimming pool?

So. This interpretation of the Act as meaning that people afab are ‘women’ for the purposes of the Act is a blow for trans rights. It means that trans people can be excluded from single sex spaces, including things like bathrooms, changing rooms, hospital wards and prisons. This is really not great.

An addendum: a gender recognition certificate changes your sex for all legal purposes. So why doesn’t it change it for the equality act? It’s because of a provision in the Gender Recognition Act (s 9(3)), which says that a GRC can be overridden - implicitly or explicitly - by other Acts.

So if we agree - and the court did clearly agree - that woman in the Act means sex assigned at birth (or as the court refers to it, ‘biologically (fe)male’), what does that mean for sex discrimination questions in general?

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But you could interpret the maternity provisions as covering any pregnant people! You could - but that would then lead to inconsistency within the Act if a trans man is a man for some employment provisions but not others. That’s really not what we want for statutory consistency.

The provisions around pregnancy and maternity are referred to exclusively with the word woman and she/her pronouns. That means that a pregnant man with a GRC would be excluded from pregnancy and maternity provisions if we interpreted exclusively on the basis of legal sex. That’s not great.

The question then becomes whether the Act should be interpreted as meaning something else - legal sex (which would mean anyone with a GRC would be classed in their current legal sex)? Or gender? The court then looked at how those interpretations would work.

In 1999, we got new regulations about discrimination against trans people. But that didn’t amend the definition of man and woman from the SDA. The Equality Act repeals and replaces those laws but didn’t change the definitions of man and woman - so the Act means sex assigned at birth.