In a landmark judgment, after years of controversy, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers today. The issue the court had to determine was enormously significant, namely the meaning of ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010. In a detailed and compelling ruling, the UK’s top court unanimously concluded that the terms refer to biological sex.
The case arose following a decision by the Scottish government in 2022 to introduce revised statutory guidance which stated that a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) would be considered a woman for the purposes of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 (which was designed to increase the proportion of women on public boards).
A GRC is a document that allows trans people to change their gender legally. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 established that a person is entitled to receive a GRC if they provide evidence that they have lived as their acquired gender for two years and intend to continue to do so until death.
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