Men Who Identify as Transgender Are Not Women, UK Supreme Court Rules

Women’s rights campaigners hailed victory for ’reality over paperwork' as For Women Scotland won a battle with government over the legal definition of a woman.

Susan Smith (L) and Marion Calder, co-directors of For Women Scotland, outside the Supreme Court in London on April 16, 2025. Lucy North/PA

The terms “woman” and “sex” in British law refer to biological women and biological sex and do not include men who identify as transgender, the UK’s Supreme Court has ruled in a landmark judgment.

The ruling makes clear that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate.”

Women’s rights groups, including For Women Scotland (FWS), which brought the case against Scottish ministers to the UK’s highest court, celebrated the judgment, handed down to a packed courtroom in London on Wednesday.

Another women’s rights group, Sex Matters, said in a statement: “We are delighted that the Supreme Court has accepted the arguments of For Women Scotland and rejected the position of the Scottish Government. The court has given us the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex – male and female – refers to reality, not to paperwork.”

However, LGBT charity Stonewall said there is “deep concern” around the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling, which it said is “incredibly worrying for the trans community.”

The UK government said in response to the ruling that it would give “confidence and clarity” to women and that it had always supported protecting single-sex spaces.

‘Lead the World Back to Sanity’

The LGB Alliance, a charity founded to support the rights of same-sex attracted people concerned about the promotion of gender identity ideology and which provided a written submission in the case, said it is “delighted” with the “momentous” ruling.

The LGB’s co-founder, Bev Jackson, told The Epoch Times that she hopes the judgment means the UK will now “lead the world back to sanity” over the conflation of sex with gender identity.

“Lesbians have been really sidelined on this matter, when we are greatly affected by it, being told we must accept males into our groups and that if we say we are not attracted to men, we are hateful bigots and far-right and so on, which is really galling when many of us came from the traditional left,” the long-time campaigner for gay rights said.

“This is a momentous judgment, and I really hope it is the beginning of the end of the madness, and the UK can now lead the world back to sanity.”

Jackson paid tribute to FWS as “three mums from Scotland who have fought this tenacious battle against the Scottish Government for years, and won a victory for all women, as well as for the rights of lesbians in particular, who have really been at the sharp end of all of this.”

FWS brought a series of challenges, beginning in Scotland and culminating in the UK-wide Supreme Court, over the definition of “woman” in Scottish legislation mandating 50 percent female representation on public boards.

‘Plain and Unambiguous Words’

The long-running case centred on whether a man with a gender recognition certificate (GRC), which legally recognises his gender as female, should be treated as a woman under the UK’s 2010 Equality Act.

Lawyers for FWS argued that not tying the definition of sex to its “ordinary meaning” could have far-reaching consequences for sex-based rights, as well as “everyday single-sex services” such as toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, domestic violence, and rape crisis centres.

Counsel for the Scottish Government argued at the Supreme Court hearing in November that a person with a GRC is “recognised in law” as having changed sex.

However, the five judges unanimously agreed with FWS that when it was drawn up, the 2010 act was referring only to biological women and that men who identify as transgender cannot claim to be in the category of women under the law.

Screen grab of judges at the Supreme Court in London, handing down their judgment on the legal definition of a woman on April 16, 2025. PA Video/PA

Lord Hodge, sitting with lords Reed and Lloyd-Jones alongside ladies Rose and Simler, said the “central question” is how the words “woman” and “sex” are defined in the 2010 Equality Act.

He told the courtroom, “The terms ‘woman’ and ’sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”

The justices said that this interpretation of the law does not cause disadvantage to transgender people, who were described as a “potentially vulnerable group,” because they are protected from being discriminated against under the Equality Act. However, it means that a person, even if they have lived as the opposite sex for many years, will have no automatic right to access single-sex spaces.

The 88-page judgment said that while the word “biological” does not appear in the definition of man or woman in the Equality Act, “the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman.”

The justices added that interpreting biological sex with GRCs would “cut across the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way.”

“We can identify no good reason why the legislature should have intended that sex-based rights and protections under the EA 2010 should apply to these complex, heterogenous groupings, rather than to the distinct group of biological women and girls, or men and boys, with their shared biology leading to shared disadvantage and discrimination faced by them as a distinct group,” they said.

‘Hugely Vindicated’

Joanna Cherry, KC, the former Scottish shadow home secretary who clashed with former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and many others within her own party on the issue, said she feels “hugely vindicated” by the ruling, but warned it needs to be implemented into everyday practice.

She told the PA news agency outside the court: “Now it’s over to the politicians to make sure that the law is obeyed.

“I’m calling on my former colleague John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, and on the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to respect this judgment and to do what they say that they do.

“They both say they believe in women’s rights, and they believe in women’s rights to single-sex spaces. If they mean that, then they need to make sure that public policy changes to respect the fact that women means biological women and lesbian means women who are sexually attracted to women.

“Men are not included within those categories.”

Cherry said there will “have to be a sea change” across the public sector to recognise that the law has been clarified in the ruling.

Swinney wrote on social media platform X that the Scottish Government “accepts today’s Supreme Court judgement.”

In a short statement, he said: “The ruling gives clarity between two relevant pieces of legislation passed at Westminster.

“We will now engage on the implications of the ruling. Protecting the rights of all will underpin our actions.”

Campaigners from For Women Scotland outside the Supreme Court in London on April 16, 2025. Lucy North/PA

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who has previously spoken out against gender ideology and the harm it does to both women and children, welcomed the judgment on X.

“Saying ’trans women are women' was never true in fact and now isn’t true in law, either,” she wrote.

“A victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious.

“Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex.

“The era of Keir Starmer telling us that some women have penises has come to an end. Hallelujah!”

‘Extraordinary, Tenacious Women’

Author JK Rowling, a vocal supporter of FWS, also commented on X, saying: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK. @ForWomenScot I’m so proud to know you.”

During the hearing in November, Aidan O’Neill, KC, for FWS, told justices the Scottish ministers’ position that sex, man, and woman in the Equality Act refer to “certificated sex”—as the sex on a person’s birth certificate whether or not amended by a GRC—is “just wrong and should be rejected by the court.”

But Ruth Crawford KC, for the Scottish Government, said a man who becomes a woman “in consequence of a GRC” is entitled to those protections “just as much as others enjoy those protections who are recorded as a woman at birth.”

She also said the “inevitable conclusion” of the FWS challenge, if successful, is that men with GRCs would “remain men until death for the purposes of the Equality Act.”

The court was also told that since the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, 8,464 people in the UK had obtained a GRC, which requires a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, living as the opposite gender for at least two years and with an intention to live as that gender for the rest of the applicant’s life.

The matter first came to court in 2022, when FWS successfully challenged the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 over its inclusion of men who identify as transgender in its definition of women.

The Court of Session ruled that changing the definition of a woman in the act was unlawful, as it dealt with matters falling outside the Scottish Parliament’s jurisdiction, as equality law is not a devolved matter.

Following the challenge, the Scottish Government dropped the definition from the act and issued revised statutory guidance, which is essentially advice on how to comply with the law.

This stated that under the 2018 act, the definition of a woman was the same as that set out in the Equality Act 2010, and also that a man with a GRC recognising their gender as female had the sex of a woman.

FWS challenged this revised guidance on the grounds that sex under the Equality Act referred to its biological meaning and that the Scottish Government was overstepping its powers by effectively redefining the meaning of “woman.”

However, its challenge was rejected by the Court of Session’s Outer House on Dec. 13, 2022.

The Inner House upheld that decision on Nov. 1, 2023, but granted FWS permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court.