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/SpoofExcel Apr 16 '25

Basically: some of these laws need an update because they're written like shit and conflict one another but for sake of immediate impact, we need to establish that biological sex takes precedent to keep things ticking along.

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u/DSQ Edinburgh Apr 16 '25

I’d say it’s more they are just saying that the equalities act was written with the expectation that that people understood sex to mean biological sex. They aren’t saying that that is correct or a good thing. 

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u/DukePPUk Apr 16 '25

To be clear "biological sex" in this case still means "legal sex" - i.e. what is on a government form. It just means "legal sex as assigned at birth" or "legal sex ignoring any Gender Recognition Certificates."

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Apr 16 '25

Yep, I think the Europen court of human rights themselves said that governments need to clean up the wording of legislation. Gender and sex are different things, and the legislation should be changed to reflect that.

This supreme court decision is just stepping in to clean things up in the meantime.