As it stands, I think there are insufficient protections and there is a need for further legislation and clarity about when you can exclude by sex and when you can exclude by gender. And we need to clarify sex/gender protections across a range of legislation. The SC can't do that though.

It's not feasible in everyday life - someone with a GRC gets a revised birth certificate anyway. And it's not like you can put a security guard on every toilet demanding a hormone test before you allow in any suspiciously tall woman.

You're clearly very angry, and I agree this decision makes very clear that there are insufficient protections for trans and gender non conforming individuals. But I don't think the Supreme Court could have decided otherwise, based on the constraints they perceive themselves as bound by.

The question was whether the GRA was implicitly excluded, which can be done under s9(3) GRA. In order to keep consistency across the whole Act, it must have been implicitly excluded. I agree, the arguments on lesbian spaces poor - but other arguments are, like gender-affected sport.

They weren't the unique hinge, but they were a very clear indicator. The Inner House suggested that woman would be interpreted in different ways in different parts of the Act, which the SC said is unacceptable. I don't think it was a reversion to the 1975 definition - it never changed.

I'm not sure I understand this point - where in the GRA are you referring to? This is noted extensively in the SC decision, where they use 9(3) to reason that the GRA must be excluded by virtue of the incoherence of interpreting it as including those with a GRC.

The thing is post-op is not a legal status. GRC is a legal status, and doesn't require operative intervention. That means you can have two biologically identical people, one with a GRC and one without, who if they got pregnant, would have different protections, which is untenable.

That means we need to introduce new legislation which considers the overlap between sex and gender protections because the definition in the SDA, and thus the EA, fails to protect many trans and enby people.

If only 'biological women' can get pregnant, but legal men can get pregnant then the maternity protections must apply to biological sex, not legal sex (or we leave trans men without protections). For consistency, all references to woman/sex in the EA must therefore mean biological sex.

I don't think the limited characters of BlueSky posts are enough to discuss this. The SC judgment refers to 'biological sex', which generally matches sex assigned at birth. Not everyone assigned female at birth can or does get pregnant, but *only* those afab can get pregnant.

I didn’t say it was intuitive. Being menopausal or post hysterectomy doesn’t change what sex you were assigned at birth though. And it’s unlikely that it was contemplated when the SDA was being implemented, so it’s not for the SC to critique what Parliament contemplated when they enacted it.

Again, as I said, there's a need for clearer legislation which doesn't rely on sex assigned at birth - so that gender isn't associated with reproductive organs. But the legislation, as it stands, does do that.

But there's a capacity to include trans women in single-sex spaces, provided it's reasonable and proportionate. For a surgically and medically transitioned trans woman, it would be reasonable and proportionate to include her in single-sex spaces. We need new legislation anyway - what about enbies?

But the argument made in favour of retaining the lower court decisions then leads to inconsistency in interpretation within the statute itself, if we don't want to leave trans men without maternity protections. Yes, they're a very small minority, but that can't have been Parliament's intention.

Honestly, I agree - I do think there's a need to reform the legislation to make this clearer. But that wasn't for the Supreme Court to do - it's a job for Parliament.

It's not the only example they use for determining whether it means sex assigned at birth - just the only one I listed. It's discussed in part 15 of the judgment (paras 166-88), where they look at various provisions, including the incoherence of differentiating between a trans person with/out a GRC.

Thread has a second half here: bsky.app/profile/aisl...