The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled on Wednesday that trans women do not fall within the definition of women under the country’s anti-discrimination law, the Equality Act of 2010 [For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers]. .It unanimously said that the term “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refers to a “biological woman” and “biological sex”.“A person with a GRC [gender recognition certificate] in the female gender does not come within the definition of “woman” for the purposes of sex discrimination in section 11 of the EA 2010 [Equality Act 2010]. That in turn means that the definition of “woman” in section 2 of the 2018 Act [Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act, 2018], which Scottish Ministers accept must bear the same meaning as the term “woman” in section 11 and section 212 of the EA 2010, is limited to biological women and does not include trans women with a GRC,” the Court ruled. .The decision was delivered by five judges of the UK’s top court – President Lord Robert John Reed, Deputy President Lord Patrick Stewart Hodge, Lord David Lloyd Jones, Lady Vivien Rose and Lady Ingrid Ann Simler. While announcing the decision, Deputy President Lord Hodge said, “We counsel against reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another.”.The dispute started in 2018 when the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act, 2018 to increase the number of women in public authority boards to 50%. The law included trans women in the quota. A feminist voluntary organisation named ‘For Women Scotland’ took the Scottish government to court, arguing that trans women should not be included as part of the quotas.After one judicial review, the Scottish government amended its guidance to say that only trans women with a GRC would be counted in the quota..However, the judges today ruled against the Scottish government. “Nothing in this judgment is intended to discourage the appointment of trans people to public boards or to minimise the importance of addressing their under-representation on such boards. The issue here is only whether the appointment of a trans woman who has a GRC counts as the appointment of a woman and so counts towards achieving the goal set in the gender representation objective, namely that the board has 50% of non-executive members who are women. In our judgment it does not,” they concluded. .[Read Judgment]
