The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has delivered a significant ruling, declaring that the term "woman" as defined under the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex and not gender identity.
This judgment, issued on Wednesday, comes in response to a legal challenge brought by campaigners in Scotland, who argued that certain legal protections should apply solely to individuals assigned female at birth.
In a unanimous decision, the court clarified that when the Equality Act refers to "man," "woman," and "sex," it is referencing biological distinctions rather than self-identified gender.
The ruling, described as landmark by many legal observers, affirms that the meaning of sex in equality legislation is binary and rooted in physical characteristics.
“The Supreme Court unanimously allows the appeal. It holds that the terms ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘sex’ in the EA 2010 refer to biological sex,” the judgment stated. The decision was jointly delivered by Lord Hodge, Lady Rose, and Lady Simler, with agreement from the other justices on the bench.
The judgment further elaborated, “The definition of sex in the EA 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary — a person is either a woman or a man. Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex, and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men.”
Although the word “biological” does not explicitly appear in the Equality Act, the court held that the interpretation of "sex" should be understood in its ordinary and unambiguous sense, which aligns with biological characteristics.
It noted that this differentiation, based on biological sex, was assumed to be self-explanatory and required no additional elaboration.
The legal battle began in 2018 when campaigners challenged the Scottish government’s interpretation that transgender women holding a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) should be legally recognised as women and therefore benefit from women-only rights and protections.
The Scottish authorities maintained that such individuals were legally female under the law, and should be treated accordingly.
However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this position. By affirming the biological definition, the court has established that individuals who are born male and later identify as women — even those with a GRC — do not fall under the legal definition of “woman” for the purposes of sex-based protections under the Equality Act.
Despite this, the ruling does not strip transgender individuals of all legal safeguards. The justices made it clear that trans people remain protected under the Equality Act’s provisions against indirect discrimination, regardless of whether or not they possess a Gender Recognition Certificate.
“Consequently, transgender people (irrespective of whether they have a GRC) are protected by the indirect discrimination provisions of the EA 2010,” the court explained.
This means they are shielded from being disadvantaged as a result of group-based inequalities related to gender reassignment, and are also protected where such disadvantages overlap with their biological sex.
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