The Supreme Court judgment issued last week is undoubtedly a serious blow to equality, diversity and inclusion and will empower those who would marginalise LGBT people.

Your headline, “Supreme Court rules ‘woman’ in context of Equality Act means biological woman” is entirely correct. The mainstream media on the other hand, including some who really should know better, generally ran with the over-simplified line that the Supreme Court has ruled on the definition of a woman in UK law which is, of course, not correct.

In announcing the judgment, Lord Hodge was at pains to point out that the court’s decision was focused only on the question of interpreting the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ as they are used in the Equality Act 2010 in such a way that gives internal cohesion to that Act and was not about the more general question of the definition of “woman”, “man” in law or in society.

The ruling, massively disappointing as it is, is not a license to misgender, harass or attack trans and non binary people. As an example of good practice, Lord Hodge deliberately avoided misgendering trans women when he referred to the court’s definition of a trans woman, “by that I mean a person born male, possessing a gender recognition certificate amending her gender to female”.

Finally, in the judgment the court expressly states that its interpretation of the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ for the purposes only of the Equality Act 2010 “does not remove protection from trans people, with or without a GRC”.  The fight for LGBT inclusion in the law school, the professions and more widely will continue despite this setback and the world-wide reactionary attacks on equality, diversity and inclusion.

Brian Dempsey
School of Law
University of Dundee