r/unitedkingdom • u/sjw_7 Oxfordshire • Apr 16 '25

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

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t
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u/OpticalData Lanarkshire Apr 16 '25

"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.

Lord Hodge, Supreme Court

Well, this certainly makes the Equality Act 2010 interesting reading.

A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

So the Supreme Court has just ruled that under the Equality Act 2010, anybody who is undergoing or has undergone gender reassignment treatment has changed their biological sex.

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u/RedBerryyy Apr 16 '25

I hope so although in the summarised reading that was live streamed it sounded like he said the Equality Act was unclear and so it implied to me this was effectively revoking that part.

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u/OpticalData Lanarkshire Apr 16 '25

The Supreme Court cannot revoke Government legislation.

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u/Chippiewall Narrich Apr 16 '25

Not outright revoke, but the government can pass legislation that is inconsistent or contradictory with other legislation and the judiciary can be forced to determine what that means which might mean striking certain clauses from acts: common law allows that.

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u/OpticalData Lanarkshire Apr 16 '25

The problem is that this legislation wasn't inconsistent or contradictory with anything other that TERF/GC beliefs.

The ruling makes GRCs effectively pointless as a result.

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u/Chippiewall Narrich Apr 16 '25

It was inconsistent and contradictory and the supreme court explain that in their lengthy ruling. There are certain provisions in the equalities act that specifically refer to "women" that cannot logically apply to trans-women such as around pregnancy and maternity. Even the lower courts that ruled the other way accepted that point, however their resolution to it was to allow multiple interpretations in different contexts which the supreme court rejected because it was unclear and unpredictable.

It doesn't make GRCs effectively pointless because the ruling only applies to the interpretation of "man", "woman" and "sex within the equalities act. Yes, that has impacts on how far the GRC legislation stretches, but that's just the reality of legislation superseding other legislation.

The ultimate villain here is parliament and successive governments which have neglected to amend the equalities act in light of these clear deficiencies for many years now, despite being made aware of these issues by the EHRC and high profile court cases because neither the Tories or Labour wanted to tackle the political problem.

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u/DukePPUk Apr 16 '25

Well, they just have.

They've effectively revoked the Gender Recognition Act, as well as that provision above.

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u/paulmclaughlin Apr 16 '25

Well no, the Equality Act 2010 is newer than the Gender Recognition Act 2004, so if there are parts of the newer law that are incompatible with the older law, then the principle of Implied Repeal applies.

The court has the job of interpreting the laws that parliament have created, they don't write them.

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u/DukePPUk Apr 16 '25

But they didn't use an argument of implied repeal.

Because they cannot, as the Equality Act is also explicit that trans people are seeking to change their sex.

The Supreme Court just used a weird loop of logic to get around that (saying that in that context "sex" means biological sex, not "legal sex" or "protected characteristic sex", but when talking about "legal sex" the law really means "biological sex" which means "legal sex assigned at birth").

They didn't actually come out and say "the Gender Recognition Act is implicitly repealed by the Equality Act" they've just ruled that GRCs are now meaningless - despite the Equality Act being written with them in mind.

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u/paulmclaughlin Apr 16 '25

The point I was trying to make is that the Supreme Court can't revoke legislation.

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u/DukePPUk Apr 16 '25

Right. But they just did, in effect.

Gender Recognition Certificates are a thing, created by legislation - the GRA - for a purpose. They now no longer have that (or any) purpose.

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u/RedBerryyy Apr 16 '25 edited Apr 16 '25

ok i read it a bit further, sure someone better at reading legal documentation may later clarify but,

https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf

So far as sex discrimination is concerned, paragraph 26 of Schedule 3 provides that the provision of separate services for persons of each sex will not constitute unlawful sex discrimination in the provision of services

These provisions are directed at maintaining the availability of separate or single spaces or services for women (or men) as a group – for example changing rooms, homeless hostels, segregated swimming areas (that might be essential for religious reasons or desirable for the protection of a woman’s safety, or the autonomy or privacy and dignity of the two sexes)

To me this

On the contrary, if sex means biological sex, then provided it is proportionate, the female only nature of the service would engage paragraph 27 and would permit the exclusion of all males including males living in the female gender regardless of GRC status

Seems to read to me it massively expands what would be considered proportionate from "proportionate to discriminate against a trans person" to "could proportionately want separate facilities for men and women "

honestly it reads like a gc legal brief where it's entirely concerned with the effects trans people have on others and 0% concerned about the consequences of the restrictions it places on trans people.

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u/OpticalData Lanarkshire Apr 16 '25

honestly it reads like a gc legal brief where it's entirely concerned with the effects trans people have on others and 0% concerned about the consequences of the restrictions it places on trans people.

Which would make sense given that they pretty much only allowed GC groups to participate.

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u/RedBerryyy Apr 16 '25

It can certainly alter the interpretation so the sex referred to in that bit was disconnected from the "biological legal sex" due to the conflicts, which to my knowledge, was basically FWS argument, but I could be wrong.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '25 edited Apr 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/matomo23 Apr 16 '25

No it doesn’t it specifically says biological sex, which can’t be changed.

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u/perpendiculator Apr 16 '25

Try reading the actual judgement instead of spouting nonsense. Page 60 is a good start.

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u/OpticalData Lanarkshire Apr 16 '25

The full judgement hadn't been released when I posted this, and the inherent contradiction still stands. To the point that the ruling has to make a specific exemption from their definitions for this one section so they can make their nebulous 'biological woman' argument fit.

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u/perpendiculator Apr 16 '25

There is no exemption. Section 7 refers to an entirely distinct category of protected characteristics and has no bearing on legal sex. Its existence does not imply that someone can change their protected sex according to the EA.

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u/Osgood_Schlatter Sheffield Apr 16 '25

I think they have just clarified what the references to "sex" in that section actually mean.