On 16 April 2025, the Supreme Court decreed that the terms ‘woman’, ‘man’, and ‘sex’ under the Equality Act of 2010 should be redefined to refer only to biological sex, rather than gender identity. Previously, under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, trans people with gender recognition certificates (GRCs) were to be treated as their acquired genders ‘for all legal purposes’. Now, trans people, even those with GRCs, can be legally barred from single-sex spaces including public toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, shelters, prisons etc, and also excluded from affirmative action programmes.
The exclusions will require case-by-case legal justification from the organisations which choose to enforce them, and must be based on ‘proportionate’ and ‘legitimate aims’. The Supreme Court emptily reassured trans people that they would still be legally protected from forms of discrimination based on the characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ in areas such as employment, education, and the provision of services. But this is of no consolation to the tens of thousands of trans people across Britain whose healthcare and legal rights are being revoked, and who are subject to around 5,000 reported hate crimes a year.
One early consequence of the ruling is the revision by the British Transport Police of their procedures on strip searches, which will be henceforth conducted ‘in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee’. This will allow for male officers to conduct intimate searches on any woman that they suspect to be transgender, making it clear that the law offers no serious protections for trans people at all.
In response to the ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) issued its own guidance that trans people should not be permitted to use facilities in line with their gender identities. This applies to all schools, workplaces, sports bodies, public services, and associations of 25 people or more. There are now also circumstances where trans people will be barred from using facilities that correspond with their biological sex, such as in the event of the provision of a third, segregated space for use by transgender people. One wonders if we will next be forced to access services through our own ‘transgendered entrances’!
Unfazed by the British Medical Association assessing the ruling as ‘scientifically illiterate’, Keir Starmer and Women and Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, claim that the ruling provides ‘real clarity’ for women and services. But for the rest of us, the decision raises more questions than it answers. How will exclusions be enforced? How will a person’s sex be ascertained? How will intersex people be affected? The Supreme Court has bent the knee to the bio-essentialist, conspiratorial ideology of the TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists), and the Labour Party, which is now able to distance itself from its supposed ‘wokeness’ on the issue in the face of the challenge from Reform UK.
The Labour Party is not alone in embracing the reactionary ruling. A joint communiqué by the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Young Communist League (YCL) issued two days after the ruling stated:
‘We welcome the Supreme Court’s clarification that “sex” means biological sex in the Equality Act 2010 . . . This materialist outcome corroborates our view that “sex” must mean biological sex for the purposes of the Act and any other interpretations would negate its single sex statutory protections. We reject any notion that the Supreme Court ruling was influenced by, or issued as a result of, a transphobic political climate.’
In practice, the CPB/YCL are adapting to the sentiments of the most backward sections of the working class. The ruling has nothing to do with defending or advancing the rights of women, which will come under increasing attack by the Labour government as the crisis deepens.
The demonstrations across the country in the weeks following the judgment were a refreshing response to the ruling. Dominated by young people, protests were democratic in spirit and conduct, with open mics being the norm rather than the usual exclusionary methods adopted by the official labour movement. In Brighton, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and elsewhere, comrades of FRFI addressed crowds in the thousands to call for solidarity with trans people in the face of this attack by the British state. The Revolutionary Communist Group signed a 28 April open letter by the Trans Safety Network calling on LGBTQ+ Pride event organisers to reject the presence of the Labour Party and Tory Party at their events; and organisers of Pride in Birmingham, Brighton, London, and Manchester have since issued a joint statement ‘suspending political party participation’ from this year’s events.
Another world is possible! Trans liberation now!
Lainey Everin
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
