U.K. Supreme Court upholds biological definition of woman

The United Kingdom’s top court on Wednesday ruled unanimously that a 2010 British equality law defines a woman as someone born female. Men who claim to be transgender cannot be considered women for equality purposes, even if they have a gender recognition certificate that legally identifies them as female. In their ruling, the judges found that not protecting the definition of women, as based on biological sex, could endanger the availability of single-gender spaces such as changing rooms, homeless shelters, or medical facilities. Giving transgender people with a legal certificate the same protections as women under the U.K.’s Equality Act would give those people more rights than other transgender people without the certificate, according to the ruling.

What else does the ruling say about transgender people? While the ruling clarifies who is considered a woman by equality law, Judge Lord Patrick Hodge said transgender people will still be protected from discrimination. Such individuals still have protections under other antidiscrimination and equality laws, he said.

What is the history of the case? The women’s rights group For Women Scotland in 2022 sued the government over a law passed in 2018 by the Scottish Parliament that they claimed could disenfranchise women. That law required 50% of public board representatives to be female but included men who claim to be women in its definition. The law could conceivably allow boards to be made of only men while still technically following the requirement, the women’s group argued. 

Dig deeper: Read Katie J. McCoy’s opinion column about what is needed to defeat transgender ideology.