The United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled on 16 April that ‘sex’ in UK law refers to a person’s biological sex. A theologian argues that we are rolling back the clock to a time when trans people like her were effectively eradicated from public life.

In April, the Supreme Court eliminated the legal basis for a swathe of trans rights in the UK. The Equality Act 2010 forbids discrimination based on “protected characteristics”, such as gender reassignment or sex, except where it is a “proportionate means to a legitimate end”. This includes the creation of spaces for individuals with a shared protected characteristic, such as same-sex spaces. For more than a decade, the Act was interpreted as requiring trans people to be treated the same as others of the sex in which they live, including access to same-sex spaces. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that trans people must be treated like people who share their sex on their original birth certificate, stripping this automatic inclusion from us.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is now holding a consultation on the changes it has made to its code of practice for services, public functions and associations in light of the Supreme Court ruling. Its guidance represents nothing short of a US-style bathroom bill: trans people are banned from using the spaces corresponding to our acquired gender. It is also segregationist: where possible, businesses and services are to force us into gender-neutral facilities. It encourages harassment by empowering organisations to police single-sex spaces by challenging anyone they think will make cis people uncomfortable or distressed by their presence, and to invade privacy by demanding to see birth certificates, or make even more invasive inquiries into people’s gender history.

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