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A UK Supreme Court ruling is about to appear and the transgender community is terrified

  • 1 day ago
  • 10 min read

 At 9.45am on Wednesday 16 April, the UK Supreme Court will hand down its judgments in the For Women Scotland case. It could change everything for the endlessly-attacked UK trans community.


Introduction

 

That a minority group is fearful that the UK Supreme Court will remove its basic human rights might surprise some people. After all, one of the key arguments for having unelected judges in a democracy is that the judges will step in and protect minorities from the ‘tyranny of the majority’. And there is certainly a tyranny against the transgender community in the UK, and many places globally (prominent recently, of course, the grotesque witch-hunt by Donald Trump against trans people in the United States).

 

For at least the last nine years, the British media has waged a hate campaign against the trans community originally triggered by a report[1] from the Women and Equalities Committee on “Transgender Equality”. This started as one or two pieces in a few newspapers and then become a daily event across nearly all of them. The statistics are eye watering.  In February 2025 (an entirely typical month though many have actually exceeded it), one monitor counted 99 articles hostile to the trans community from more than 70 journalists across major UK titles[2]. This hatred has spread to the political sphere. Initially with the frenzied hatred-for-headlines directed at the community by the Conservative government after 2018, and more recently with Labour’s less vocal but no less pernicious approach. Most recently, Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has banned transgender children from receiving certain internationally accepted medical treatments from NHS and private providers[3]. Meanwhile care for trans young people has all but collapsed, the Tory-manipulated (and internationally condemned) Cass Review has received Labour’s full support and plans are afoot to ‘review’ adult trans care in the UK – leading the community to look on with horror, understanding as it does that the term review will likely mean destroy.

 

This blog focuses on the latest episode of these attacks; The Supreme Court case and the rights that are under threat. Just a couple of days before the ruling appears and without knowledge of it, it explains why the trans community believes it absolutely possesses these legal rights, and describes what we see as the appalling behaviour of the Supreme Court justices in this case.

 

What is at stake for trans people?

 

The case is for judicial review of a decision made by the Scottish Government brought by a single-issue pressure group, For Women Scotland Limited (‘FWS’). FWS is an anti-trans group which campaigns to remove legal rights and societal acceptance of transgender people, with a powerful focus on trans women. FWS has argued that even the roughly 3%[4] of trans people who have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate (‘GRC’) under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (‘GRA’), a long and arduous process, should be treated under the Equality Act 2010 (‘EA 2010’) as their birth sex[5]. FWS has further asserted that this means trans people have no rights to use single-sex facilities, such as toilets and changing rooms, according to their lived gender[6]. It has already lost its initial court case on this, and its subsequent appeal. It was given leave to appeal to the Supreme Court and found the funding to do so.

If FWS is successful in all its arguments, this will have a devastating effect on trans people in the UK. Using toilets that align with their birth rather than lived sex would ‘out’ trans people and leave them subject to discrimination in a country in which the prevailing political and media discourse has become hysterically hostile towards them. As well as a public insult to the dignity of trans women, being required to use the men’s toilets and changing rooms puts them at the risk of harassment and assault. A cisgender (i.e. non trans) woman would be horrified to have to strip naked in front of a group of men in a changing room. Transgender women feel the same way.

 

For trans men, the dynamics of being forced to use women’s toilets and changing rooms are different, but no less worrying. Many trans men look and sound identical to cisgender men. Cisgender women using the women’s toilets would be concerned about men using the facilities and complain. The trans men may consequently be arrested[7] or even attacked by concerned relatives of the women, and ultimately find themselves barred from both the men and women’s toilets. If trans men and women are unable to use toilets that match their lived sex, they will find themselves unable to work or participate in society. This is happening right now in the United States, as part of the frenzy of hate-filled initiatives launched by Trump.

 

It has been argued that trans people should use gender neutral facilities. Many buildings do not have gender neutral facilities and anti-trans groups have successfully campaigned to reduce both the support for and the numbers of them[8].

 

It should also be noted that, of course, that should FWS win, organisations will be under no obligation to stop trans women from using the women’s toilet nor trans men the men’s toilet. However, without a legal backstop, vociferous legacy and social media campaigns run by anti-trans groups will very likely soon cause organisations to enact such bans[9]. The UK trans community is watching what is happening in the United, inspired in many ways by arguments originally articulated by British anti-trans activists, with deep fear. We know of trans people desperate to leave the US if they can – though few want to come to the UK, with many feeling that the situation could soon be the same for them here.

 

In summary, should FWS win on all its arguments, then life will become impossible for trans people in the UK. This includes Dr Victoria McCloud, a retired High Court judge (the only trans judge in the UK), whose career was ended after vindictive agitation against her[10]. McCloud and her family have made plans to emigrate should FWS succeed[11]. If a trans woman as professionally successful as Dr McCloud feels be unable to live in the UK, what hope might there be for the rest of the UK trans community (for many of whom the possibility of leaving the UK is a financial or practical impossibility)?

 

Legal backdrop to and drafting of the GRA

 

It is important to step back and review the protections that the trans community has long had in the UK. These protections predate the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010. They are all at risk right now.

 

The transgender community established key legal rights in a series of court cases prior to the enactment of the GRA. In Croft v Royal Mail[12], it was established that trans people had a legal right to use single sex facilities, such as toilets, provided they had made sufficient progress in their transition[13].

 

In A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police[14], it was established that a trans woman who had “done everything that she possibly could do to align her physical identity with her psychological identity”[15] should be treated as a woman under the then Sex Discrimination Act 1975[16] and be entitled to be employed in roles specifically reserved for women. Further, it was established that she was entitled to perform non-consensual strip searches of women as she was to be treated as a woman under the relevant sections of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

 

In Bellinger v Bellinger[17], the Law Lords, were unwilling to find that a trans woman could be viewed as a woman for the purposes of marriage, believing it to be a decision for Parliament. However, they made a finding that in failing to treat a trans woman as a woman for the purpose of marriage, the relevant statutes were incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998. In the case of Goodwin v the UK[18], the European Court of Human Rights found that the UK had breached articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide a mechanism for Ms Goodwin to change her birth certificate and failing to allow her to marry as a woman.

 

To address the issues in Goodwin and Bellinger, Parliament enacted the GRA. The intention of the act was clearly to give trans people legal rights they did not yet have, not remove pre-existing rights. Subject to a few limited exceptions, the GRA states that trans people who have obtained a GRC are to be treated as their lived sex “for all purposes”[19]. Yet it remains incredibly difficult for a trans person to obtain a GRC[20].

 

To do this, a trans person has to provide documentary evidence that they have lived in their current gender and then convince a Gender Recognition Panel (‘GRP’) that they intend to live in their current gender for the rest of their lives[21]. To support this, they have to provide detailed medical evidence of gender related treatments[22]. From the design of the act and the behaviour of the GRP it is clear that a trans person who has not made a full medical transition, will have significant difficulty in convincing the panel[23]. Initially, a trans person had also to be single. This requirement was later changed to give trans people in a civil partnership or marriage the option of obtaining consent to change their gender from their spouse instead of divorcing them. The reason for this initial stance was that at the time the GRA was enacted, same sex marriage was not legal in the United Kingdom and the government did not wish to provide any form of ‘loophole’. By requiring a trans person to be single at the time of receiving a GRC, the government prevented two individuals who were legally of the same sex being in a marriage together. The intent of the GRA was to address the issues in Bellinger and Goodwin by providing trans people with a mechanism to add to their existing legal rights. To change your birth certificate or marry in your lived sex, you needed a GRC. But the cost of obtaining one was the need to divorce your spouse.


The Behaviour of The Supreme Court

 

The UK has a tawdry reputation of allowing the trans community rights and then removing them (Corbett v Corbett[24], EA 2010[25]). It is the only community to whom this has happened in British peacetime legal history as it has been singled out for collective discrimination. It could be about to happen again. It traditionally does this without allowing the community the slightest voice in any process.

 

And the signs were familiar and depressing from the very start of the Supreme Court case, to which trans people were not permitted to submit evidence.

 

By contrast, despite the fact that no conceivable ruling of the Supreme Court could in any way undermine the existing rights of cisgender women, and even though the view of anti-trans campaigners was already represented by FWS, four further anti-trans groups were permitted to intervene (Sex Matters, Scottish Lesbians, the Lesbian Project and the LGB Alliance). They were joined by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (‘EHRC’) – a quango populated by the last Conservative government to contain some truly anti-trans voices. In 2023, the EHRC wrote[26] to the government asking for them to amend the EA 2010 to treat the sex of trans people as their birth not their lived sex. The EHRC was thus essentially lobbying the executive to make the same changes to the law that FWS wishes to achieve through this court case.It is difficult to know how the judges responded to the submissions made by this parade of trans-hating groups, in the absence of any voice explaining the reality of trans lives.

 

Concluding thoughts

 

Past court decisions have confirmed that trans people, even without GRCs, should be treated in their lived gender under equalities legislation provided that they meet certain criteria. Should FWS win on all its points, then these rights will be stripped from the trans community. Trans people will likely be put in a position where they will be unable to live in this country; the lucky ones will have the resources and opportunity to emigrate.

 

The judges are making their decision in a climate of sustained, soul-destroying media hate. Alongside this, an authoritarian, neo-fascist regime in the United States is pursuing an eliminationist agenda against trans people, explicitly aiming to remove us from society, along with other marginalised groups.  As we approach the publication of the ruling, we note the usual newspapers beginning to anticipate it, shaping and framing the arguments in ways that will promote their endless bigotry towards trans people, irrespective of what the judgment actually is. Even though we don’t know what is coming on Wednesday, we know exactly how the British media will seek to exploit it. They will claim victory and the hunt will go on.

 

No wonder so many are terrified.

 


[4] Numbers are approximate as the number of trans people in the UK is unknown. The number of trans people from the 2021 Census is 262,000, but the question on this was optional. The latest figures state that 8686 GRCs have been issued, but some of the people who received a GRC may since have died.

[5] ‘Birth sex’ is an imprecise term, but has an intuitive meaning. This blog avoids the term “biological sex” since many trans people change aspects of this during their transition.

[7] See for example this article about police officers attempting arrest a butch cisgender woman for using the women’s toilets after assuming she was male https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/03/cops-burst-into-womens-restroom-to-remove-butch-lesbian-accusing-her-of-being-a-man/

[9] See for example the consumer boycott against Bud Light after Anheuser-Busch who make the beer paid a transgender influencer to promote it  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Light_boycott

[12] [2003] EWCA Civ 1045

[13] Ibid. Para. 53 “The moment at which a person in the applicant's position is entitled to use female toilets depends on all the circumstances, including her conduct and that of the employer. The employers must take into account the stage reached in treatment, including the employee's own assessment and presentation.”

[14] [2004] UKHL 21

[15] Ibid. Para. 61

[16] Ibid. Para. 11

[17] [2003] UKHL 21

[18] Application No 28957/95

[19] GRA s. 9(1)

[20] AB v Gender Recognition Panel [2024] EWHC 1456 (Fam)

[21] GRA s. 2(1)(c)

[22] GRA s. 3(1)

[23] The case of AB shows clearly the difficulties that trans people who have made a significant medical transition can still have in obtaining a GRC

[24] [1971] P. 83, [1970] 2 All E.R. 33

[25] For example, under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, trans women could not be excluded from applying for female only roles. This protection was not included in the EA 2010.

[26] See https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/clarifying-definition-sex-equality-act although note the actual letter has disappeared from its website

Where have we been?

  • Jan 3
  • 7 min read

Deciding to suspend our work In 2023 we at Trans Legal Project suspended our work and we have, with one brief exception, stayed off social media since then. The purpose of this summary is to give you some explanation for why we stepped back and why we haven’t as yet returned.

 

TLP has always had two people at its core, both trans. One is a qualified legal expert, who has made it their mission to develop an encyclopaedic understanding of UK law as it effects trans people. The other, who has focused on our social media and online output, has a long history of activism and has made significant contributions in other areas of trans rights over the last 15 years. Neither of us is interested in the limelight or in supporting our own egos in this work but simply in trying to give the community a solid, reliable and honest point of view around the law, to illuminate and challenge the (often poor quality) legal arguments of those who wish us ill. Though we have never been in a position to deal with individual cases, despite often being asked, central to our work has always been the provision of high-quality commentary on legal developments and rulings. We have typically spent many hours on each analysis paper, sometimes inviting other legal opinions and taking it through 4 or 5 drafts before releasing it. 

Our work has included consistently opposing the politically-driven turn of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, pointing out the shortcomings of its partisan and often legally illiterate hostility towards trans people, defending Stonewall against some ludicrous Gender Critical assertions starting with a case centring on the University of Essex, challenging offensive government and media rhetoric and absurd interpretations of the law, defending trans women’s rights to take part in sports and trans children’s rights to not face discrimination at school, taking the Daily Telegraph to IPSO and achieving a win, connecting with and receiving support from MPs and members of the House of Lords, and being referred to in the press (both mainstream and LGBTQ+) and the Scottish Parliament.

 

Around the founders, TLP has also comprised of a group of lawyers, legal researchers and legal academics, many (though not all) trans or queer, who supported the aims of the organisation. Whilst we made attempts to build capacity, our own time limitations (both with other full-time commitments), lack of financial resource and, candidly, our inexperience in scaling up our work whilst also guaranteeing its consistent high quality (so vital in matters of law), meant that we did not succeed in expanding TLP as we might have liked. In addition, and importantly, unlike some of the well-resourced Gender Critical groups that have emerged, we as founders have also had to deal with the personal effect of the avalanche of transphobic material in the discourse – legal or otherwise – that is now a feature of British life.

 

The constant drumbeat of hate inevitably had an effect. Every legal case aimed at destroying trans people's rights was, and is, obviously, aimed at destroying ours as trans people living in the UK too. The nature of the work also meant that we actively needed to seek out (and were often told of) vindictive lawsuits against trans people, in order to assess their level of threat. Alongside this, the sheer size of the task became overwhelming at a moment when other personal factors also made the work particularly challenging. The result was that we took the reluctant decision to suspend our work in large part about 18 months ago, and with the exception of a brief exploration of recent NHS guidelines prompted by some sickeningly inaccurate right-wing press interpretations, it hasn’t yet felt possible to restart it.

GC groups have changed their strategy in the UK There was however one other important factor in our decision to step back. We saw the strategy of our opponents start to change, and with it the legal landscape. When we began our work in 2021, we were, we felt, facing an increasingly coordinated threat from bigots and right-wing actors attempting to use the law as it stood to destroy our rights. Four years ago, GC individuals and groups were typically making arguments in law that were wrong, sometimes even ridiculous. We pointed this out. The judiciary, still not infected by the culture wars that have defined Britain since 2016, often agreed. For a time, GC success in the courts was relatively poor (with a few important exceptions, like Maya Forstater’s eventual legal victory) – though the British political establishment and mainstream media rallied round them more and more, whatever the outcome. We wondered how long it would be before anti-trans activists started to pivot to a new strategy and around 2023 it began to be clear that they were doing so. Since then, GC groups have, we believe, turned far more attention to not fighting the trans community under existing law, but to getting that law changed. The EHRC has led the way with its attempts to alter first the non-statutory and most recently the statutory guidance around The Equality Act, attempting to frame it in a trans-hostile terms which could pave the way for blanket-bans of trans women from areas of public life. Lobbying of parliament by GC groups has increased and been professionalised. In November 2024, an anti-trans group, For Women Scotland, reached The Supreme Court with their twice-already-lost appeal of a case that could, should the Court rule in their favour, very seriously damage the legal rights of trans women in the UK, even those with Gender Recognition Certificates. Critically, as FWS’s legal team likely knows, even should they lose again there is a chance that The Supreme Court, influenced by the deafening newspaper-led witch-hunt against trans people, will issue in its judgment some obiter* remarks that may still be strongly sympathetic and legally helpful to their position. The Court may even suggest to the government that the law should be changed to discriminate against trans women more clearly – a prompt which the new Labour government could use to do just that (just as it has used the cover of The Cass Review to decimate the lives of trans young people, despite international condemnation). This also illustrates an additional feature of the current legal landscape; in our view, the British judiciary is now institutionally transphobic, with judges at all levels now inclined to provide interpretations of the law that restrict or destroy trans people’s rights. Given this clear turn, and the increasingly effective political and legal contacts being forged by well-funded GC actors, it began to seriously concern us that our takedowns of their sometimes-inept legal opinions might actually serve to alert them to the holes in their arguments, allowing them to strengthen them. Or worse, even to shine a light on aspects of the law on which they should lobby for change. Such lobbying has become intense.  Clearly, helping anti-trans activists to more effectively damage our community was, and is, the complete reverse of our aim. This was another reason to suspend our work – amongst the most powerful.

 

Communication choices

 

Our primary platform for communication has long been Twitter/X and we have built up a relatively small but valued following there (which has grown steadily even while we have been away). We will retain an account there for now, but for at least the last year have been feeling increasingly sickened by our (albeit passive) connection to a platform full of bitter hatred and where the vilification or erasure of trans people has reached epidemic levels under the ownership of the richest man in the world - someone who we believe is disturbed, unprincipled and dangerous. Because of this we will not be adding more content on X from this point - should we have more to say it will be from our Bluesky account.

 

Where to from here?

 

2025 is likely to be another difficult year for the British trans community. In the US, the return of Trump is likely to be a disaster for our siblings and the hatred that the new US administration will direct at trans people may well have an effect on the UK discourse. We can expect the Tories, Reform Party and the large number of newspapers sympathetic to them to be inspired by Trump’s ideas and to work to import them here. Whether Labour will hold the line against further destruction of trans people's human rights remains unclear - thus far it seems obvious that neither the Health Secretary nor the Prime Minister are allies and that an assault on our community could come from either (as it has already from the former in the Puberty Blocker ban and the latter in deeply transphobic remarks before the election), if it seems politically expedient. In spite of this, we believe that eventually the tide will turn. Trans people will not stop existing simply because those who hate us wish it. We have always existed - in cultures all over the world - and we always will exist, no matter what bigotry is directed at us by people who want us gone. We have some major advantages over those who hate us. First the inner truths that call us to live our lives as we truly are create in us a resilience that those who base their outlook on lies or hate can never have - because their values are based not on strength but weakness and fear. The strength we have needed to find in ourselves simply to be ourselves is a great asset and we should draw on it. Second, the reality of our lives is not as those who spread those lies would have others believe. Those who smear us, from social commentators, to journalists, to lawyers base their attacks on prejudice and invention. Social and political arrangements based on untruths always collapse eventually like a house of cards, though its not always clear how long that will take. The last Tory government in the UK disintegrated under the weight of its dishonesty and Trump will one day be gone too. We will still be here, because we are always here, when the bigots have died out.

 

We at TLP are reviewing what contribution we might make going forward. It’s unclear to us just yet – resources and support remain a major issue, The Supreme Court verdict (likely in the spring) will be central, and we remain very conscious that we don’t wish to assist our enemies by giving them legal arguments to use against us. We will continue to reflect on this. In the meantime, we’d suggest that we in the UK also turn our attention to the conditions under which trans people are living in other countries. If you want to help, please consider donating to Trans Rescue, a tremendous organisation dedicated to legally evacuating trans people from dangerous countries all over the world. Since the re-election of Trump they have been inundated with enquiries from the United States and we’re sure they would welcome your support.

 

*Commentary around the case that may not be directly related to it but relays some judicial opinion. **********

 


On June 12th MPs will debate changes to the definition of 'sex' in The Equality Act.

  • Jun 9, 2023
  • 3 min read

Here - in detail - is why the EHRC's 'advice' of April 3rd is legal nonsense.


After two opposing public petitions both reached over 100,000 signatures, British MPs will on June 12th debate the potential change of The Equality Act 2010 to redefine the term 'sex' as 'biological sex'. Such a change (also the centrepiece of anti-trans Republican programmes in a number of US states) is not yet part of the UK government's legislative programme, though rumours are circulating about its potential appearance in the next King's speech. The mood music from the UK government remains strongly anti-trans and key figures like Kemi Badenoch and Rishi Sunak himself are felt to be keen to remove trans people's long-established human and legal rights in the UK, under what they feel to be the politically bullet-proof narrative of 'protecting single-sex spaces' and women's rights. That this populist narrative has acquired a political urgency now in the UK, amidst the multiplicity of major problems the country faces, says much. Trans people have been dragged onto the battlefield of national culture wars, a small and vulnerable group whose exploitation as symbols bears no relationship whatsoever to their real lives and experiences. The misrepresentations, fears and lies promoted by the British media, and both repeated and refuelled by some in Parliament, long ago lost touch with reality. Yet these terrifying narratives have now acquired a momentum of their own. The June 12th debate itself will have no direct effect on the legislative agenda. But it may restimulate that momentum yet again, prompting further promotion of anti-trans views (with hostile positions framed all the way from liberal 'reasonableness' to naked hatred, across the British press).

And at the heart of this, the behaviour of the increasingly dysfunctional EHRC is likely to play a key role - specifically, its letter to the Minister for Women and Equalities of April 3rd.


So, as we approach another week in which the so-often toxic British national political discourse is likely to turn once more to trans people, we here break down in detail the EHRC letter and expose it for the legal rubbish that it is. We hope that those in legal or political arenas who still have an affection for facts, logic and truth as bases for organising society will be able to use it to fight the tide of self-sustaining bigotry. You can download our analysis below:


In summary, from the conclusion of our paper... In its letter of 3 April advancing the case to change the definition of ‘sex’ to ‘biological sex’ in the EA 2010, the EHRC is engaged in an extraordinary display of legal misunderstanding, confusion and prejudice. There is no trans crime wave. Trans people have received no new legal protections for 12 years. Instead, the EHRC is attempting to create and then (with confused and contradictory results) to solve a ‘problem’ that does not reflect reality.


Even by the EHRC’s own admission, the definition of the term ‘sex’ in the EA 2010 is clear. Paradoxically, given the stated aims of the EHRC, attempting to change it will lead to legal uncertainty. Claimed clarifications from changing the definition to ‘biological sex’ are either not necessary, do not produce any benefits or will not actually result from this legislative change. If the definition of the term ‘sex’ is changed, the consequential amendments that the EHRC recommend will do enormous harm to trans people in the UK. Trans people will be driven out of sports, employment and society as a whole. Large numbers of those who can leave Britain will do so, heading for jurisdictions where they will hope to find basic levels of societal respect and legal protections. Others, driven out of work, and feeling entirely unwelcome in British society as a whole, may be left subsisting on benefits.


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