The UK’s top court is being asked to consider whether someone who has transitioned to a female is considered and protected as a woman under the Equality Act.
The UK Supreme Court on Tuesday began considering a lengthy dispute between campaigners and the Scottish government on the definition of “woman” in law.
The case brought by the “For Women Scotland” campaign group, which believes that sex is biologically immutable, could have widespread implications on highly charged issues surrounding trans rights and how the UK defines gender and sex.
It could also have consequences for the country’s gender-recognition process and access to single-sex spaces for trans people.
The campaigners say the definitions of “woman” in the UK’s 2010 Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act 2004 are incompatible.
The 2010 Equality Act protects characteristics including sex, gender and gender reassignment against discrimination, and defines a woman as a “female of any age”.
Under the 2004 act, a gender recognition certificate (GRC) allows trans people to legally change their gender to identify as a man or a woman.
The UK’s top court is being asked to consider whether someone who has transitioned to a female is considered and protected as a woman under the Equality Act.
Gender-critical campaigners argue that while transgender women are protected under the Equality Act, they cannot be afforded all the protections reserved for “women”.
In opening arguments to the court for the campaigners, Aidan O’Neill argued that the conflation of the two would have an impact on single-sex spaces such as women’s shelters and prisons.
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Ahead of the hearing, Amnesty International, which is intervening as a third-party on the side of the Scottish government, said “legal gender recognition is a human rights issue”.
“Sections of the media and politicians across parties continue to spend an eye-watering amount of time berating trans people, who are only about one per cent of the population,” the human rights group added.
The landmark case has come to the UK Supreme Court in London after For Women Scotland challenged 2018 Scottish legislation to get more women on public sector bodies.
In guidance issued for the legislation, the devolved Scottish parliament in Edinburgh said someone who has transitioned to a woman and has a GRC would be considered a woman under the Equality Act as well.
For Women Scotland unsuccessfully challenged the guidance, with a Scottish judicial review concluding that sex was “not limited to biological or birth sex”.
Trans rights have been the target of highly polarised culture wars in recent years.
The case brings to a head arguments by gender critical campaigners like author JK Rowling, whose opinions have made her the poster-child of some feminists but drawn the ire of other trans and LGBTQ+ rights groups.
Rowling said on X: “Whatever the outcome of the case, it won’t change what a woman is. What the court’s really deciding is whether or not to remove rights from women and girls.”
The issue has also been politicised, causing tensions between Edinburgh and London.
Scotland passed a bill in 2022 making it easier for people to change their gender officially. But in a rare use of its veto powers against the Scottish administration, the UK government blocked that bill.
Britain’s Conservatives, in power at the time, promised to make “clarifications” in the law so that the word “sex” defines biological sex and not gender.
They also made excluding trans women from single-sex spaces a focal point in their election campaign earlier this yea
