Supreme court ruling 'could mean UK is not meeting human rights obligations,' lawyer findsThe Independent
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00:00It's certainly possible that what the Supreme Court has showed us is that the UK is not meeting its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
00:09The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.
00:21I think there's a fear. I think it's, um, what's that children's game that we play at Christmas where you pull out one straw and then another straw and another straw and eventually all the marbles collapse.
00:31We have the Gender Recognition Act, not because any UK government decided it was a good idea, but because the European Court looked at a case called Goodwin particularly and said,
00:59there has to be an effective state means of recognising the changed gender of trans people.
01:05The statutory guidance says that trans people should be accommodated in services or workplaces in accordance with their affirmed gender, and that hasn't changed.
01:14Sex is real, and that women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women, and we are enormously grateful for the Supreme Court for this ruling.
01:36The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, and harassment.
01:55I'm not particularly impressed by this ruling because I think it hasn't engaged with the difficulties that it will cause properly.
02:02Um, perhaps that's not surprising, given that, um, only one, there were a number of interveners, uh, only one of which was trans-supportive, and there are a number of arguments which I don't see in the judgment.