UK Supreme Court defines ‘who is a woman’ based on ‘biological sex’, transwomen not included

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on Wednesday ruled that the definition of ‘biological woman’ does not include transwomen. The court stipulated that under Britain’s Equality law, a woman is a person who is born biologically female.

“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,” Justice Patrick Hodge ruled.

The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognises them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.

The apex court, however, has said that transgender people in the country will still be protected by rights.  Hodge said, “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.”

The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating that there should be a 50 per cent female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. That law included transgender women in its definition of women.

Why did the court rule the way it did?

Explaining the judge’s ruling, Justice Hodge said that the Equality Act provides group-based protection against discrimination on the grounds of sex and gender reassignment.

The judgment added interpreting sex as ‘certificated sex’ would create “heterogeneous groupings” by disrupting the definitions of man and woman in the EA in a way that is “incoherent.”

“The definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man. Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men,” the ruling added.

Women’s group hail judgment

For Women Scotland, a women’s rights group, hailed the judgment saying, “This has been a really, really long road. Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex.”

“Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling.”

With inputs from agencies