The Good Law Project (GLP) has lost its legal challenge to interim advice released by the UK equalities watchdog that in effect said transgender people should be banned from using bathroom and changing facilities according to their lived gender.<\/p>\n
The advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which has since been withdrawn from its website, was published soon after the landmark supreme court ruling on biological sex<\/a> last April.<\/p>\n On Friday, Mr Justice Swift found the GLP \u201cdoes not have standing to bring the challenge in this case\u201d and rejected the arguments put by the group, along with two trans people and one intersex person, that the interim advice was rushed, legally flawed and excluded trans people from accessing services they had been using for years.<\/p>\n Welcoming the high court decision, the EHRC chair, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, said: \u201cAs Britain\u2019s equality regulator, we uphold and enforce the Equality Act. This is the second time the way we have done our duty in the wake of the supreme court\u2019s ruling has been tested in the courts. Both times our actions have been found to be lawful.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s our job to champion everyone\u2019s rights under the Equality Act, including those with the protected characteristics of sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. A shared and correct understanding of the law is essential to that endeavour.\u201d<\/p>\n The ruling did find there was \u201cscope for a strong argument\u201d that allowing a trans woman to use a female toilet did not amount to discrimination against biological men, as some have argued since the supreme court ruling.<\/p>\n But in applying the ruling to workplaces, Swift came to the conclusion that transgender employees being forced to out themselves to co-workers by using unisex toilets did not amount to less favourable treatment in the eyes of the law, stating \u201cup to a point, being the subject of comment by others is burden that anyone can expect to bear from time to time, and ought not to be a foundation for legal redress\u201d.<\/p>\n The GLP director and founder, Jolyon Maugham, said this \u201cwave away as \u2018workplace gossip\u2019 evidence of what it means to be outed in an increasingly transphobic and violent society\u201d was \u201cdeeply troubling\u201d. The GLP said it planned to appeal against the decision.<\/p>\n Maugham added: \u201cI urge the judiciary to listen harder to what trans people say about what their lives have become.\u201d<\/p>\n Melanie Field, a former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act, said: \u201cSadly this judgment has not provided the clarity many were hoping for in this atmosphere where there are hardline positions on both sides and employers and service providers remain uncertain of their duties. Its reliance on the provision of universal and \u2018third spaces\u2019 to meet the needs of trans people raises practical challenges and could impact on the overall availability of single-sex facilities and the ability of trans and disabled people to live in equal dignity with others.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is positive in that it seems to reduce the risk that a women\u2019s service that chooses to include trans women will face a successful discrimination case from a man. But overall the judgment highlights the difficulties caused by having a new interpretation of the legislation which conflicts with the original policy and drafting intention. Hopefully the government will now take steps to set out clearly its policy on the treatment of trans people in our society and ensure the law reflects that.\u201d<\/p>\n The high court judgment is a significant boost for campaigners who have been growing increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of application of the ruling across the UK.<\/p>\n