Transgender women are not legally women, the Supreme Court has declared in a landmark ruling. In an unanimous decision, the five justices ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to biological sex, not acquired gender. The Telegraph has more.
Handing down judgment, Lord Hodge said it was the court’s unanimous view that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to biological sex, not acquired gender.
Gender-critical campaigners hailed Wednesday’s ruling as a victory for common sense, claiming gender “self-ID is dead”.
It follows a years-long legal battle between campaign group For Women Scotland and the Scottish Government over the definition of a woman.
Lord Hodge told the court: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the definition of the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
“But we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.”
In its 88-page ruling, the court added that the “concept of sex is binary” under the Equality Act 2010.
For Women Scotland cracked open a bottle of champagne outside the Supreme Court and broke into song to celebrate the ruling.
Susan Smith, the group’s co-director who was also handed a bouquet of flowers, said the group had been given no steer about which way the decision would go and was “really worried” it may go the other way.
In a statement outside court, she said: “Today, the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, women are protected by their biological sex – that sex is real.
“We are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling.”
Speaking afterwards, she said: “Dogs and toddlers know what sex is. It’s one of the most concrete things in nature.
“Sex can’t be changed but the law had the capacity to make a mess of anything. We’re just really glad common sense prevailed.”
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, its Chairman, said: “Today the Supreme Court ruled that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.
“We are pleased that this judgment addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces, and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations.
“As we did not receive the judgment in advance, we will make a more detailed statement once we have had time to consider its implications in full.”
Kemi Badenoch has said “you cannot change your biological sex” as she reacted to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact, and now isn’t true in law either,” the leader of the Conservative Party said.
“This is a victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious. Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex.
“The era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end. Well done to For Women Scotland!”
Follow the Telegraph‘s live coverage here.
The pushback against woke gobbledegook continues. It’s good to see the Supreme Court taking the side of common sense in this case – not something that can be taken for granted. After all, the US Supreme Court has taken the opposite view. In its infamous 2020 Bostock ruling, Neil Gorsuch – supposedly a conservative originalist justice – joined with the liberals and authored a majority opinion that claimed constitutional protections for sex apply equally to gender identity (yes, really – he argued that treating men who think they’re women differently to women necessarily means discriminating on the basis of sex, rather than, as common sense would have it, on the basis of delusion). This resulted in the US Government last year mandating the use of preferred pronouns in every workplace in America (at least we can assume this particular measure will be overturned by Trump, if it hasn’t been already).
So credit to the UK Supremes for getting it right here, something their US counterparts miserably failed to do, leaving the United States still living in trans cuckoo land.
Stop Press: Here’s a thread on X recording the struggle the leaders of the Labour Party have had trying to navigate this issue.
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It takes a Court to confirm this – what happened to a short talk about the birds and the bees?
It took 9 minutes to reach the verdict…
The judge had to spell out the verdict, letter by letter. Don’t be so harsh.
Where does this leave the Nurse Peggie case & so many others?
My guess would be that the whole quangoriat one-by-one starts to decree that, as private entities, they’re free to create private bylaws for their private premises which will categorically rule out recognizing sex as natural property of natural people in this building, that building and all other buildings. After all, if nobody is supposed to be discriminated because of sex, treating sex as universally irrrelevant is surely not discrimination!
Isn’t it telling that we’ve never seen any court cases and similar hoo-ha surrounding FtM trans people? We never seem to hear the question: “What is a man?” Or the statement: “Trans men are men”. Always the other way round. Anyone would think it’s because women who trans to ‘men’ just go about their lives in a non-predatory, non-law-breaking or non-attention-seeking fashion and that all of this limelight and focus on actual women is because MtF trans people do in fact pose a threat to women’s sex-based rights. Unless it’s all just an illusion and nothing more than “media distortion”…
The first girl I ever fell in love with was later-on talked into really being a man by a shrink of hers and undergoing the corresponding surgical and chemical transition treatment at a time when this didn’t make headlines yet. She has now been living as a man (assuming she still does) for at least 35 years and obviously used male facilities all the time. Considering this, my guess would be that women are more likely to complain about something like this and much more likely to find someone who’s willing to listen.
As I understood, Trans Men, only account for 10% of those with gender dysphoria. I think this is why Trans-womanism has been seen by many, as a homosexual fetish.
Without a dought, she’ll win and quite rightly too.
Sorry, doubt.
I read that as ‘Without a doughnut, she’ll win…’
That’s obviously a better outcome than the opposite but I don’t think Westminster law makers and courts ever had any authority over natural properties of God’s creation.
Yes. Exactly. Badenoch’s remark that what is true in fact is now true in law rightly implies that a man would remain a man and a woman a woman whatever the law said. And cannot we say the same about marriage? It remains a contract solely between a man and a woman, even though the law now says the contrary?
And cue screaming in 3…2….1…
Hallelujah!
I guess it is black armbands all round down, at the Grauniad and in White City…..
Indeed, the ‘Beeb’ will be in mourning. They probably had a minute’s silence before the wailing broke out. Reality has punctured their airhead bubble for a few minutes.
Nevertheless, I’m sure they will want the European Courts to get involved somehow. Interesting that the Labour Party don’t appear to be welcoming this.
The BBC ( cue more examples of traitorous women ) think that men pretending to be women, whilst encroaching on our private spaces and cheating us out of our sporting opportunities, are “vulnerable”
We will ignore the reality that men, whether they don a dress or not, will always pose a bigger threat to females than females pose to males, then.
https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1912440465963597953
As the Anugidra just titled:
Critics of Trans Rights Win UK Supreme Court Case
Not supporters of women’s rights, obviously. Such a thing must not exist.
Thank goodness for this Supreme Court ruling. I was beginning to think that God had got things wrong.
Such elegant sarcasm, hux
Thanks M A k.
A triumph, sort of. It’s the victory of one delusion over another.
The whole gender identity thing is delusion bordering on insanity.
But the whole idea that you can decree equality by law isn’t much better. In fact the whole concept of equality is rooted in ideological delusion.
I would be happier if this ruling could have been given by the Law Lords instead of the Supreme Court, thanks to Tony B.Liar it wasn’t to be.
Eventually the bouffant bastard will go away permanently.
Hear, hear! Abolish Blair’s Copycat Supreme Court and Bring Back The Law Lords!
Indeed. Obsessing about equality seems like a route to a very unhappy and frustrating life.
Can this be applied to marriage too? Homosexual marriage just as much a delusion as a woman with a penis?
Good. But why did it take the court 88 LONG-WINDED PAGES to explain that simple truth, which everyone in the whole world already knows? This ludicrous fact alone illustrates the bloated monster the judiciary has become.
And what if the decision had gone the other way? As in the States, where Americans seem to have forgotten that the US Supreme Court’s jurisdiction is limited to matters contained within the US Constitution, and therefore all its edicts on subjects such as sex, genders, marriage, diversity, equality, inclusion, medical matters, school toilet facilities and nurses changing rooms are NULL & VOID.
If it ain’t in the Constitution, it’s none of the Supreme Court’s business, and they must keep their big noses out of it!
Unfortunately, people who are well-versed in legalese can talk up a lot of seriously outlandish justifications for whatever they’re desiring to do and since there’s no court above the US Supreme Court, its judges will usually get away with this.
We should reflect upon the solemn truth that a woman’s body is a temple of pain. And so by virtue of its pain it remains sacrosanct. The horrors of menstruation, the agnony of childbirth. And then osteporosis and hormone problems. The weeping wand the wailing. At one time there were places where women could cry and scream together. We don’t tread on that world.
In other news, after careful consideration and weighing up the arguments, the Supreme Court has confirmed that water is wet.
Or that marriage is a contract between a man and a woman?
I’ve been very concerned about the way our judiciary have bowed to government instructions, which is against our basic legal principles. I am so glad that these judges have not complied with the beliefs and stupidities of that idiot Starmer and made the right decision based on natural law and now also our law. There have too many instances recently when other judges have been told what to do by Starmer and have done it irrespective of real justice. There have been too many cases where people have been sent to prison for saying what should be permitted in a country once lauded for its belief in free speech now destroyed by incompetently biased judges.
Best news this year and I’m a man.