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Shop the collectionWe challenged the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s transphobic guidance. The High Court will consider our case in full in November.
The High Court has set a date in November to consider Good Law Project’s challenge to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance, which has spread confusion and fear through the trans community since it was rushed out in April.
Days after the Supreme Court’s decision in the For Women Scotland case, the EHRC published – without consultation – an “interim update” which encourages companies and public bodies to stop trans people from using toilets in line with their lived gender.
This unleashed a wave of uncertainty and anxiety, with trans people challenged in bathrooms, outed in their workplaces, and under such stress that some were unable to keep doing their jobs.
In May, Good Law Project teamed up with two trans people and a person who is intersex to challenge this damaging update.
We think the EHRC’s guidance goes far beyond what the For Women Scotland judgment requires. It amounts to a bathroom ban for trans people, violating people’s right to privacy in their everyday lives.
The High Court has now scheduled a two-day hearing to consider the case in full in November. For Jess O’Thomson, Good Law Project’s community outreach lead, this means businesses and services should “hold fire, or find themselves in hot water”.
“The EHRC’s guidance could be leading people into legal error,” O’Thomson said. “A narrative has been spun up about the ‘clarity’ brought by the Supreme Court judgment, but the legal situation is actually very complex.”
Anti-trans actors have taken this “as a green light to try and strip away trans rights”, O’Thomson added, “but that’s just not how the law works. Businesses are taking a big risk by rushing ahead without the full picture.
“Trans people still have human rights protections in this country, and at Good Law Project, we plan to defend them.”
We’ll be arguing in November that the EHRC was wrong to say employers can only provide gendered toilets based on “biological sex”, and wrong to ignore ways that companies and the public sector can provide trans inclusive men’s and women’s facilities.
