A group of activist bodies in the United Kingdom have written to Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressing their concern about a recent ruling in the country’s Supreme Court, which held that “women” in the country’s equality legislation referred to biological sex and not to self-identity.
Shortly thereafter, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission said that transgender people should not have access to facilities if these did not match their biological sex.
The groups – including prominent organisations like Stonewall and the LGBT Consortium – said that the judgment created “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK”, and had upended the previously prevailing understanding of the Equality Act. The judgment, it said, would promote “a legal framework that simply cannot uphold the dignity, protection and respect of trans people”.
The ruling would create “confusion and a significant lack of clarity about what this means for businesses, services and civil society and most importantly the impact on trans people.”
In addition, they felt that the comments from EHRC represented “significant overreach”.
The bodies requested a meeting with Starmer to discuss these matters.
[Image: Alexander Grey on Unsplash]