Since the Supreme Court ruling last month, there’s been a lot going on.
Below we’ve tried to:
(Although a quick note – this is far from a complete list. We want to say thank you to everyone who has been contributing time and energy to responding to the ruling).
On April 16th, the Supreme Court published their judgment in the case of For Women Scotland vs. Scottish Ministers.
It dealt with the meaning of the words “sex”, “man” and “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. The Supreme Court decided that in the Equality Act, all of those words have a “biological” meaning (although the Judges did not really define what that means).
As far as we can tell, this ruling has had two main effects:
One of the most important things you can do is make sure that the people who represent us in Parliaments know that if the ruling really means what some are arguing it does – that trans people must be banned from all spaces and services that match our gender identities, and be forced to use those matching our “biological sex”, or be segregated from other people entirely – that this will harm trans people, and that you think this approach is wrong.
As of the time of writing, the Minister still hasn’t yet approved it or sent it back. Now is a crucial time to put the pressure on and help the Minister understand what a devastating impact this Code would have on trans people’s lives.
TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance have developed a template email that you can send to your MP, encouraging them to tell the Minister to reject the exclusionary Code and demand that any new version ensures providers can lawfully include trans people in their services.
Sending an email only takes a few minutes: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/scrap-the-bathroom-ban
You can also donate to us, or purchase a Trans Ally pack: https://equalitynetwork.bigcartel.com/
It’s also really important that we understand the kinds of experiences people are having in single-sex spaces and services, and if your workplace, university, or any service is changing how it treats you as a result of the ruling.
This will help everyone who wants trans people to be properly included in society figure out the best next steps – by letting us understand exactly what’s happening to people, where it’s happening, and what can be done to make things better.
Our friends at TransActual have a tracker of these experiences that you can fill out here: https://transactual.org.uk/equality-act-campaign/single-sex-tracker/
And Good Law Project are also asking people to let them know what’s happening: https://goodlawproject.org/campaign/trans-fighting-fund/
We know that some people will want to attend protests about what is happening. What the Trans?! are compiling a list of protests all around the UK. If you attend – please try to keep yourself and others safe.
Scottish Trans and the Equality Network wrote to the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee about our initial response to the ruling. We explained the harm that would be caused to trans people if the ruling really does mean that we will be banned from using services and spaces that align with our gender identity. You can find out more about that here: https://www.scottishtrans.org/supreme-court-first-thoughts/
We wrote to the Scottish Parliament’s Corporate Body to object to their decision to ban trans women from women’s toilets, and trans men from men’s toilets. We told them we thought the decision was rushed, unworkable, and exclusionary. You can find out more about that here: https://www.scottishtrans.org/changes-to-scottish-parliament-toilet-provision-will-exclude-and-segregate-trans-people-at-the-heart-of-scotlands-democracy/
We sent a briefing to all Scottish MPs about a debate on Monday 19th May in the UK Parliament, about allowing trans people to self-identify their legal gender. We explained that, while we support the call for self-identification, what is far more urgent is that following the Supreme Court ruling, it is not clear that the UK has an effective legal gender recognition system at all. You can read our briefing here: https://www.scottishtrans.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Scottish-Trans-briefing-Westminster-Hall-Debate-petition-701159-Allow-transgender-people-to-self-identify-their-legal-gender.pdf
As this is all about the law – some of the links below are pretty complicated!
A trans barrister wrote an excellent piece explaining some of the human rights considerations missing from the Supreme Court’s decision: https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2025/05/06/crash-wigley-for-women-scotland-a-case-of-significant-silences/
A trans legal researcher wrote an excellent piece explaining some of the impacts of the court’s decision: https://www.wearequeeraf.com/uk-supreme-court-rules-that-trans-women-arent-women-under-the-equality-act-2010/
The Good Law Project have published a list of FAQs about the ruling: https://goodlawproject.org/resource/trans-inclusion-after-the-supreme-court-decision-faqs/
You can read the court’s decision itself here (a quite technical 88 pages!): https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
Right now, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is consulting on an update to their Statutory Code of Practice for services. They opened this consultation on Tuesday 20th May, and the deadline for responding is 30th June.
Unfortunately, the EHRC has become increasingly hostile to trans people’s equality and human rights over a number of years – we have written about that here, here and here.
This Statutory Code of Practice will be one of the most important pieces of guidance used by service providers to help them take decisions about how they treat trans people going forward. It can have legal weight in discrimination cases – and it has to be approved by the UK Government, and laid at the UK Parliament. The last few years of how the EHRC has behaved, and the interim update that they published on the meaning of the ruling a few weeks ago, means that as we expected the draft Code pretty much exclusively focuses on how to exclude trans people from services and spaces.
We are working in partnership with others to try to understand how organisations, trans people, and our friends, families and allies can meaningfully participate in this consultation, and what kind of responses to it might help. We’ll share updates with you as soon as we possibly can.
30 Bernard Street Edinburgh EH6 6PR
+44 (0)131 467 6039 info@scottishtrans.org
Scottish Trans is part of the Equality Network
Scottish Trans is the Equality Network project to improve gender identity and gender reassignment equality, rights and inclusion in Scotland. The Equality Network is a leading Scottish lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) equality and human rights charity.
The Equality Network is a registered Scottish charity: SC037852, and a company limited by guarantee: SC220213.
We are grateful for funding from the Scottish Government
