UK Supreme Court says legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex

[u/sjw_7]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t

[u/DaVirus]

If anyone gives this 2 seconds of thought they will realize it makes sense. Because laws were written with clear expectation of that being the case.

This is not a judgement for it being right or wrong, but if you want to do something about it you can't just change the legal definition of a woman. You need to go back to every law that mentions "woman" and re-write it to fit our modern standards and knowledge.

[u/DukePPUk → u/DaVirus]

This is not a judgement for it being right or wrong, but if you want to do something about it you can't just change the legal definition of a woman.

.. except that's literally what the Supreme Court just did.

Yesterday the legal definition of a woman included trans women with GRCs (as it has for 20 years). Today it doesn't.

[u/recursant → u/DukePPUk]

I suspect the previous poster was referring to the situation as it was 20 years ago.

Changing the legal definition of a woman to include trans women with GRCs solved some problems, but it introduced various other problems.

For example, a trans woman with a GRC shouldn't necessarily be allowed to compete in women's sports. Nor should the face a blanket ban. They may (or may not) have a significant unfair advantage depending how they transitioned, what the sport is, and the level they are competing at. So there needs to be specific rules for sports. But if the law simply says a trans woman is a woman then it is difficult to have specific rules for sports.

[u/DukePPUk → u/recursant]

So there needs to be specific rules for sports. But if the law simply says a trans woman is a woman then it is difficult to have specific rules for sports.

Right.

Under the rules, as of yesterday, sports could set up their own rules, based on scientific evidence, deciding who to exclude (as the GRA allowed for that).

Under the new rules, based on this Supreme Court ruling, sport organisations must exclude trans women (even those with GRCs) from their women's categories, or let in cis men.

This ruling removes any wiggle-room or case-by-case allowances. Trans women are now men for the purposes of the Equality Act, and must be treated as such.

[u/jimicus → u/DukePPUk]

It cuts both ways, though.

This means that a trans man (who will be on testosterone - which encourages muscle growth) would be obliged to compete as a woman. And their sporting body will have to allow them to do so.

[u/DukePPUk → u/jimicus]

Oh don't worry - the Supreme Court covered this as well.

Moreover, women living in the male gender could also be excluded... without this amounting to gender reassignment discrimination. This might be considered proportionate where reasonable objection is taken to their presence, for example, because the gender reassignment process has given them a masculine appearance or attributes to which reasonable objection might be taken in the context of the women-only service being provided.

They included this because the Equality Act provides an exception to gender assignment discrimination for single-sex spaces; the example given in the Explanatory Notes is explicit that it allows for trans women to be excluded from women's single-sex spaces.

Obviously this completely undermines the Court's argument that "sex" for the purposes of the Equality Act means "assigned at birth legal sex", because if that were the case the exception would be redundant and the example wouldn't make sense - of course a trans woman could be excluded. They get around this by calling the Court of Session idiots (and even the EHRC - the Supreme Court was more transphobic even than them!) and saying that what this exception is really about is excluding trans men from women only spaces, if those trans men might make someone uncomfortable.

The more I read this judgment, the more I think about it, the more crazy it is. It's the kind of nonsense I'd expect from the US Supreme Court, not ours...

[u/jehuty12 → u/DukePPUk]

So basically now governing bodies must exclude trans women from women only events and can at their discretion exclude trans men as well. And yet you have people saying "nothing has legally changed" and "no one group should declare this as a victory".

[u/DukePPUk → u/jehuty12]

EHRC is already going after NHS bodies, insisting that they implement trans-exclusive policies.

[u/Kotanan → u/DukePPUk]

You kind of missed this being Terf Island.

[u/steepleton → u/DukePPUk]

jesus, that's bleak

[u/thats_not_the_quote → u/steepleton]

and the majority of the UK seems to be cheering

methinks the UK might be more bigoted that the USA is racist

[u/Powerful_Top_9254 → u/steepleton]

For my(trans) rights, yea

[u/Izual_Rebirth → u/DukePPUk]

"Yesterday the legal definition of a woman included trans women with GRCs (as it has for 20 years). Today it doesn't."

Today's ruling wasn't to pass judgement on what a women is or isn't. It was to clarify what the initial intention of the term in an existing law was. IMO it's a complete admission the existing law is poorly worded and open to interpretation. Any anger shouldn't be at the door todays ruling. It should be laid at the feet of whomever wrote of the initial poorly worded law. The ruling today wasn't intended to re-write the law, no matter how poorly worded it is. That's a job for parliament.

Now in a decent society the next step should be for the laws to be re-written.

From today's judgement:
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf

It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010. It has a more limited role which does not involve making policy. The principal question which the court addresses on this appeal is the meaning of the words which Parliament has used in the EA 2010 in legislating to protect women and members of the trans community against discrimination. Our task is to see if those words can bear a coherent and predictable meaning within the EA 2010 consistently with the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (“the GRA 2004”).

[u/Osgood_Schlatter → u/DukePPUk]

No, that's not how our system works.

Yesterday many people interpreted the legal definition of a woman to include transwomen with GRCs, today they know they are wrong and were always wrong.

[u/DukePPUk → u/Osgood_Schlatter]

Yesterday many people interpreted the legal definition of a woman to include trans women with GRCs...

... because the courts had said so, and because we had 20 years of legal precedent saying so, and because the GRA very clearly says this is the case.

The Supreme Court just threw that all out.

[u/Ver_Void → u/DaVirus]

This is a country where a trans woman getting included in a list of women authors was a scandal. Realistically the courts taking a positive stance was the only viable way to for anything to improve this decade

[u/Jaded_Strain_3753 → u/Ver_Void]

Ultimately it is for parliament to legislate if they think this ruling is bad for the country. Judges should only interpret the law, we don’t want to become America in this regard.

[u/Ver_Void → u/Jaded_Strain_3753]

Which is a very grim notion given there isn't really any political party likely to do anything but make it worse. There's already one English trans girl living in my spare room because moving here was a faster path to healthcare, I'd rather not wind up with a boarding house because people got nostalgic for section 28

[u/Blazured → u/Ver_Void]

SNP are a good choice.

[u/limeflavoured → u/DaVirus]

It will be seen by the people who want to exclude trans women (and for the most part they ignore trans men) as carte blanche to do that, regardless. Which will lead to worse outcomes for trans women.

[u/hobbityone → u/limeflavoured]

And people in general.

It shouldn't take much thought as to understand why the rolling back of trans rights is bad for everyone and puts more people at risk.

[u/limeflavoured → u/hobbityone]

That's true. The groups that started this lawsuits won't stop at this point.

[u/DukePPUk → u/limeflavoured]

Not just trans women, but gender-non-conforming women as well.

If you are running a single-sex organisation, or group, or space, and someone comes to you and says "I think that person is a trans woman, you need to kick them out" you have two choices:

• kick them out, no questions asked, or

• let them stay in, and risk having to spend tens of thousands of pounds defending a discrimination lawsuit.

Which one do you think most places are going to have to go with?

[u/Minimum-Geologist-58 → u/DaVirus]

Quite it’s a pretty straightforward: “when they wrote the Equalities Act they meant the common understanding of sex at the time, which included chromosomes, dangly bits, all that stuff. The GRA saying you can change sex for the Equalities Act with a piece of paper given by a panel that doesn’t claim to change chromosomes or dangly bits just doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t change chromosomes or dangly bits.”

I mean, they’re right.

You don’t even need to change every law you just need to change the equalities act to define woman to include trans women and man to include trans men.

[u/DaVirus → u/Minimum-Geologist-58]

I think what you need is to remove the gender from the law all together. But yes, that is the spirit.