UK Supreme Court judge Lord Hodge announces that the Equality Act’s definition of a woman is based on biological sex.
He counsels not to see this as a triumph for one side over another and stresses the law still gives trans people protection against discrimination.
“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
“But we counsel against reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not.”
Transgender people still have protection, judge says
published at 10:13
10:13
“As I shall explain later in this hand down speech, the Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender,” Lord Hodge says.
Lord Hodge says the predecessors to the Equality Act used definitions of biological sex, and gender reassignment was added as a separate protected characteristic.
He tells the court that, after “painstaking analysis”, including people with a Gender Recognition Certificate in the sex group would make the Equality Act read in an “incoherent way”.
He says that issues relating to pregnancy and maternity can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex, while other parts of the Equality Act refers to “certificated sex” as well.
