Thousands of people took to the streets in London and Edinburgh on Saturday to protest a recent UK supreme court ruling that defines a “woman” legally as someone assigned female at birth.
Activists, trade unions, and members of the LGBTQ+ community held rallies in support of trans rights, waving flags and holding signs reading “trans women are women” and “trans rights are human rights.”
The ruling, issued on Wednesday, has major implications for single-sex spaces and services such as toilets, changing rooms, and hospital wards. According to the court, these services “will function properly only if sex is interpreted as biological sex.”
Many in the trans and non-binary community say the decision undermines their identity and increases their vulnerability.
In London, police reported that seven statues near the protest were vandalised, including one of suffragette Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.
Justice Patrick Hodge said he and four other judges ruled unanimously that “the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman”.In the law, “the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ … mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man,” the judges wrote.
The court’s decision followed a legal dispute between the Scottish government and campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), which challenged Scotland’s interpretation of the Equality Act. While the Scottish government argued that trans women with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) should have equal protections, the court disagreed.
The group lost a ruling in a Scottish court in 2022 but was later granted permission to take its case to the supreme court, which held hearings in November.
