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 US 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.
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ban-on-puberty-blockers-to-be-made-indefinite-on-experts-advice
[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
[10] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/uks-only-trans-judge-quits-over-risk-of-politicising-the-judiciary-lpsqjtghv
[11] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/28/transgender-judge-seeks-leave-to-intervene-in-uk-court-case-over-legal-definition-of-woman
[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