\u201cThe unanimous decision of this court is that the terms \u2018woman\u2019 and \u2018sex\u2019 in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex,\u201d said Patrick Stewart Hodge, deputy president of the Supreme Court of the U.K., reading the decision.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled on Wednesday that only biological women are protected under Britain\u2019s Equality Act, contradicting prior statutory guidance by the Scottish government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s highest court found in the landmark decision that individuals who have obtained a gender-recognition certificate (GRC) of legal transition from male to female are not considered women under the 2010 Equality Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unanimous decision of this court is that the terms \u2018woman\u2019 and \u2018sex\u2019 in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex,\u201d said Patrick Stewart Hodge, deputy president of the Supreme Court of the U.K., reading the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.K. court ultimately ruled<\/a> that \u201cthe concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man,\u201d and that it would be \u201cincoherent and impracticable\u201d to allow persons with a GRC to be categorized as women under the Equality Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, it also specifies that this does not mean persons who identify as transgender are stripped of legal protections as a protected class. Rather, it specifies that the \u201cprotected characteristic\u201d of persons who identify as transgender is \u201cgender reassignment\u201d rather than \u201csex.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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 \u201cwoman\u201d other than when it is used in the provisions of the [Equality Act] 2010,\u201d the ruling notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The decision follows a long drawn-out legal case between the Scottish government and For Women Scotland, a women\u2019s rights organization<\/a> dedicated to improving protections for women and children.\u00a0<\/p>\n The dispute began<\/a> in 2018 after the passage of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018, which sought to counter gender imbalance on public sector boards and included transgender-identifying persons with GRC certificates in the quotas as women.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Women Scotland challenged the act in 2022, leading to a drawn-out battle in which the group filed two appeals that were both dismissed before the case ended up in front of the U.K. Supreme Court three years later.<\/p>\n \u201cToday the judges have said what we always believed to be the case: that women are protected by their biological sex, that sex is real and that women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women,\u201d For Women Scotland co-founder Susan Smith told those gathered outside the courthouse, according to Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n