For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers

For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 is a landmark UK Supreme Court judgment delivered on 16 April 2025, concerning the definition of "woman", "man" and "sex" in the Equality Act 2010.

Background

The case was brought by For Women Scotland (FWS), a gender-critical advocacy group, which challenged guidance issued by the Scottish Government on the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. That Act aimed to improve gender balance on public boards by setting a target of 50 per cent female representation. The Scottish Government's guidance stated that "woman" for the purposes of the Act included transgender women who held a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) — a legal document recognising a person's acquired gender under the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

FWS argued that the Equality Act's definition of "woman" referred to biological sex only, and that the Scottish Government's guidance was therefore unlawful. Lower courts ruled against FWS, but the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The ruling

On 16 April 2025 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that references to "woman", "man" and "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 mean biological sex — the sex recorded at birth. The court found that a Gender Recognition Certificate does not change a person's sex for the purposes of the Equality Act .

The court emphasised that its role was limited to interpreting existing legislation and that it was not seeking to define sex or gender more broadly, nor to adjudicate on the wider public debate. It also affirmed that transgender people retain protection from discrimination under the gender reassignment provisions of the Equality Act, which are separate from and unaffected by the ruling on sex.

Third party interveners in the case included Amnesty International, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Sex Matters, Scottish Lesbians, the Lesbian Project, and the LGB Alliance. No transgender organisations were permitted to intervene directly.

Reactions

The ruling was welcomed by gender-critical campaigners. Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, said: "Today, the judges have said what we always believed to be the case — women are protected by their biological sex."

Trans rights organisations and broader LGBT+ groups condemned the ruling as a serious setback. Stonewall described it as deeply damaging to trans people. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a Red Flag Alert regarding its potential implications for transgender and intersex people in the UK. The British Medical Association's Resident Doctors Committee condemned the ruling as "reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical."

Victoria McCloud, the UK's first transgender judge, highlighted the practical difficulties the ruling created, noting that she personally would not know which public bathroom she could safely use following the judgment.

Practical implications

The ruling does not require organisations to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces — it confirms that they may lawfully do so. Critics of the ruling have noted that it creates significant practical difficulties, particularly for transgender people who have fully transitioned and live entirely in their acquired gender. A fully transitioned trans woman who is visually indistinguishable from a cisgender woman would, under a strict biological reading, be required to use male facilities — an outcome widely described as both unworkable and potentially placing trans people at risk of harm.

The EHRC has suggested the practical answer lies in expanding gender-neutral provision rather than rigidly enforcing biological sex at existing facilities. The ruling has prompted reviews of policy across healthcare, sport, prisons, and public services.

In August 2025, For Women Scotland made a further legal application for Scottish Government policies on schools and prisons to be quashed on the basis of the judgment.

See also

• Transgender
• Gender Recognition Act
• Equality Act 2010
• Girlguiding and transgender membership
• Gender critical