UK Supreme Court considers legal definition of women

Photo: Andy Buchanan Agence France-Presse Two women demonstrate for trans rights outside British government offices on January 19, 2023, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Agence France-Presse in London

Published yesterday at 9:00 a.m.

• Europe

The judges of the British Supreme Court will consider the legal definition of women on Tuesday, after an appeal by a Scottish association which believes that it should be based on biological sex and not gender.

This dispute pits the association “For Women Scotland” against the Scottish government, who have been at loggerheads since 2018 over the interpretation of the Equality Act (2010).

It is to be debated before the Supreme Court until Wednesday.

For the Scottish government, the 2010 law is clear: the gender recognition certificate, obtained following a gender transition, is authoritative in the eyes of the law.

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Not for the association “For Women Scotland”, which opposes this interpretation.

It believes that “there are only two sexes and that a person's sex is not a choice and cannot be changed,” according to its website.

It is a “question of biological fact,” it claims in its appeal to the Supreme Court.

For the association, the Equality Act systematically refers to sex as an “immutable biological criterion” and it supplants the interpretation according to which the gender reassignment certificate is authoritative in determining a person's sex.

If the Supreme Court were to rule in this sense, the consequences could be immediate for transgender women, the associations fear, fearing that they will no longer be able to access certain places including shelters reserved for women by example.

The debate is not new, however. Last June, in the middle of the election campaign, the Conservatives promised, if they remained in power, to make “clarifications” in the law so that the word sex defined biological sex and not gender.

In Scotland, the subject has always been particularly thorny. In 2022, the local government passed a law to facilitate gender change, allowing it without medical advice and from the age of 16. The law was ultimately blocked by the central government in London.

In January 2023, Scottish authorities had to announce the suspension of the transfer of any transgender inmate with a history of violence against women to a women's prison, after two cases that had caused controversy.

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