Kira Herdman

Today the Supreme Court in the UK ruled on a very important court case for Transgender women in the UK.

Background

The case is set to rule on whether or not the legal definition of a woman includes transgender women with a GRC, or Gender Recognition Certificate. It was brought to the Supreme Court by the gender-critical group For Women Scotland (FSW) against the Scottish Government and asked five justices – Lord Reed, Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lady Rose and Lady Simler – to consider: “Is a person with a full Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) which recognises that their gender is female, a ‘woman’ for the 2010 Equality Act?”

FWS, who have been publicly supported by author J.K. Rowling, describes itself as a “grassroots women’s group” founded at a time of “growing unease about how women’s rights would be affected by the Scottish government’s plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), to allow for self-declaration of sex”.

Barrister Aidan O’Neill, who is representing the group, argued that considering a person with a GRC a woman was “legal fiction” and that sex was an “immutable biological state”.

Ahead of the case being heard, FWS member Susan Smith said: “If the Supreme Court sides with us, that’s fine. If they don’t, it’s a headache for Westminster. If we lose, it means that sex in the Equality Act isn’t really definable. It’s meaningless, essentially.”

The case is a direct challenge to judge Lady Haldane’s ruling in December 2022 that sex is “not limited” to biological sex and the ability of a GRC to change a person’s legal sex “does not offend against, or give rise to any conflict with, legislation where it is clear that ‘sex’ means biological sex”.

There is however one big fault I would say with this court case.

NOT ONE TRANSGENDER WOMAN WAS CALLED TO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF TRANSGENDER WOMEN

Result

The UK Supreme Court has unanimously decided that the definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 refers solely to biological sex, and does not include people with a Gender Recognition Certificate. This basically makes the GRC useless.

Thoughts

Gender Critical groups would say this is a win no matter which way the court case went. As I wrote before, FWS said “If the Supreme Court sides with us, that’s fine. If they don’t, it’s a headache for Westminster. If we lose, it means that sex in the Equality Act isn’t really definable. It’s meaningless, essentially.”.

This is yet another attack on a minority group by a well-funded, powerful group of people who have nothing better to do than pick on a small percentage of the population that is almost defenceless.

This, along with the current government’s actions to take away transgender healthcare via guidelines, is a systematic attack on transgender people by well-funded hate groups and now the British State.

However, Lord Hodge, while reading out the ruling, cautions against seeing this as a victory and talks repeatedly about the discrimination faced by trans people in the UK.

Sorry, but it doesn’t make things any better. The Supreme Court has now made the Equality Act useless.

We have to stay strong, all the LGBT community and our allies need to help us. After all, we are just humans trying to live our lives the best we can in an very uncertain world.

We shall overcome. Stand tall. Be proud of who you are.