The recent Supreme Court judgement in the case of For Women Scotland opened the door to a direct rollback of trans people’s previously established legal recognition.1 Of great concern is that this was an astonishingly poor judgement that went out of its way to ignore evidence.1
In the wake of the judgement, rather than act to safeguard trans and intersex people’s human rights, the UK’s equalities watchdog immediately called for a national trans toilet ban, which would not only ban trans people (and some intersex people) from using facilities consistent with their assigned gender, it means trans people can also be banned from spaces consistent with their assigned sex.2 3 The report calls for the implementation of systematic discrimination, segregation and exclusions targeting trans and intersex people across public life.1
The Government is now preparing to implement statutory guidance to impose this nationwide in a direct, calculated attack on transgender and intersex people’s rights, safety and dignity.4 If the draft guidance is implemented as statutory guidance, staff within organisations will have to police people’s gender and order trans people not to use toilets consistent with their acquired gender. Organisations, groups or clubs will also be banned from being trans inclusive even if they want to be.
It’s important to remember this won’t just affect trans+ people – any gender non forming cisgender people could find themselves a target of the gender policing the UK government seeks to impose.
The new draft code is here (content warning for transphobia) https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/codes-practice/code-practice-services-public-functions-and-associations
- https://goodlawproject.org/for-women-scotland-a-legal-critique/ ↩︎
- https://www.equality-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/The-Erosion-of-Trans-Rights-in-the-UK-a-human-rights-analysis.pdf ↩︎
- https://translucent.org.uk/a-supremely-poor-job/
↩︎ - https://bcf2fc07-f86e-49d8-955b-399b4586c17f.usrfiles.com/ugd/bcf2fc_1cba91b6f4854d62a801cafced8512f7.pdf ↩︎
Trans Collective Calderdale 