Supreme Court ruling: Politicians spreading ‘dangerous’ distortions

After the Supreme Court tore up the Equality Act last month, trans people are struggling to work out what this appalling judgment means for their daily lives.

But more and more people with power and influence are claiming that the judgment has defined sex for a wide range of purposes outside of the Equality Act. This just isn’t true.

The chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Kishwer Falkner, suggested the decision meant that trans women can’t take part in women’s sport or use women’s toilets. And British Transport Police said that trans women will be subjected to strip searches by male officers.

One of our supporters wrote to their local MP about this change in policy, and got a very troubling response.

The MP sidestepped their constituent’s concerns, cited the Police and Criminal Evidence Act code and claimed the Supreme Court ruling meant that “British Transport Police should ensure that officers who carry out intimate and strip searches are of the same biological sex as the detainee”.  

But the Supreme Court didn’t rule on the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It’s a completely different piece of legislation from the Equality Act, and is unaffected by the judgment.

This MP is either reckless or lying. Either way, he’s just plain wrong. 

According to the code that spells out how the Act is used in practice, “the gender (and accordingly the sex) of an individual is their gender as registered at birth unless they have been issued with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA), in which case the person’s gender is their acquired gender”. This means that if “there is doubt as to whether the person should be treated, or continue to be treated, as being male or female… the person should be asked what gender they consider themselves to be” and then be “treated according to their preference”. And despite the Supreme Court’s decision this code still remains in force.

“The implications of the Supreme Court’s judgment for the Equalities Act are difficult enough” said Good Law Project’s head of legal, James Douglas, “but it is irresponsible and frankly dangerous for those in positions of power to compound those difficulties by making incorrect claims that the judgment applies to other legislation as well.”

MPs and politicians cannot make up the law as they go along. And we will not stand by while people are misled on matters of critical importance.