Earlier on Wednesday April 16, the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom made a decision on the legal definition of a woman, ruling that it is based on biological sex.
This comes after Donald Trump also signed an executive order in the US recognizing male and female as the only two sexes.
What the ruling says in short
The Supreme Court ruling, which came on Wednesday April 16, ruled that transgender women with gender recognition certificates can be excluded from same-sex facilities if “proportionate,” the CNN reports.
FWS first brought the case to the Supreme Court
Campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) brought a challenge to the UK Supreme Court in 2018, arguing that women’s rights spoken about in the Equality Act should be reserved to those who were assigned female at birth.
They also argued about the definition of a woman
FWS also challenged the court on the definition of a woman and whether someone with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) recognizing their gender as a woman should be treated as such.
The court has now ruled in favor, saying that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”
They read the ruling in court
Justices Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler said, “If as a matter of law, a service provider is required to provide services previously limited to women also to trans women with a GRC, even if they present as biological men, it is difficult to see how they can then justify refusing to provide those services also to biological men and who also look like biological men.”
The Justices said the terms refer to biological sex
“Read fairly and in context, the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex,” they added.
The ruling, which was delivered by Judge Lord Hodge, continued, “A certificated sex interpretation would cut across the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way.”
The ruling compared the sexes
“References to a ‘woman’ and ‘women’ as a group sharing the protected characteristic of sex would include all females of any age, irrespective of any other protected characteristic, and those trans women, biological men, who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and a GRC, and who are therefore female as a matter of law,” it continued.
It also mentioned the recognition of men
The ruling went on, “The same references would necessarily exclude men of any age, but they would also exclude some, biological, women living in the male gender with a GRC, trans men who are legally male.”
This comes after Trump signed an order in the US
This ruling in the UK follows Trump’s recent executive order in the US which decrees male and female as the only two biological sexes.
What Trump’s order states
The executive order states, “Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing long standing, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.”
The ruling has resulted in mixed reactions
Like Trump’s executive order on the matter, the ruling in the UK received mixed reactions.
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While some campaign groups are calling the recent ruling ‘wonderful’ news, trans rights groups are saying it’s ‘not justice, it’s erasure’.
