UK Supreme Court hears landmark legal challenge over how ‘woman’ is defined in law

While the lawsuit centres connected Scottish laws, the run radical bringing the challenge, For Women Scotland (FWS), has said its outcomes could person UK-wide consequences for sex-based rights arsenic good arsenic mundane single-sex services specified arsenic toilets and infirmary wards.

What’s the lawsuit about?

The lawsuit stems from a 2018 instrumentality passed by the Scottish Parliament stating that determination should beryllium a 50 per cent pistillate practice connected the boards of Scottish nationalist bodies. That instrumentality included transgender women successful its explanation of women.

The women’s rights radical successfully challenged that law, arguing that its redefinition of “woman” went beyond parliament’s powers.

Scottish officials past issued guidance stating that the explanation of “woman” included a transgender pistillate who has a sex designation certificate.

FWS is seeking to overturn that.

“Not tying the explanation of enactment to its mean meaning means that nationalist boards could conceivably comprise of 50 per cent men, and 50 per cent men with certificates, yet inactive lawfully conscionable the targets for pistillate representation,” the group’s manager Trina Budge said.

The situation was rejected by a tribunal successful 2022, but the radical was granted support past twelvemonth to instrumentality its lawsuit to the Supreme Court.

“Immutable biologic state”

Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer acting for FWS, told the Supreme Court judges connected Tuesday that nether the Equality Act “sex” should notation to biologic enactment and arsenic understood “in ordinary, mundane language.”

“Our presumption is your sex, whether you are a antheral oregon a pistillate oregon a miss oregon a lad is determined from conception successful utero, adjacent earlier one’s birth, by one’s body,” helium said.

“It is an look of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biologic state.” Opponents, including Amnesty International, accidental barring transgender radical who clasp a sex designation certificate from protections against enactment favoritism conflicts with quality rights principles.

Amnesty submitted a written involution to the court, saying it was acrophobic astir the deterioration of the rights for trans radical successful the UK and abroad.

“A broad argumentation of barring transwomen from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to execute a morganatic aim,” the quality rights radical said.

The entreaty proceeding is expected to past 2 days with a judgement expected astatine a aboriginal date.