Trans women cannot use single-sex female toilets or changing rooms, equalities chief says

The ruling that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex” means transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”, the Supreme Court said.

Baroness Falkner said organisations should be “taking care” to look at the “very readable judgment” to “understand that it does bring clarity, helps them decide what they should do”.

Asked if it was now simple that trans women cannot take part in women’s sport, she told the Today programme: “Yes, it is.”

On changing rooms and toilets, Baroness Falkner said: “Single-sex services like changing rooms must be based on biological sex.

“If a male person is allowed to use a women-only service or facility, it isn’t any longer single-sex, then it becomes a mixed-sex space.

“But I have to say, there’s no law that forces organisations, service providers, to provide a single-sex space, and there is no law against them providing a third space, an additional space, such as unisex toilets for example, or changing rooms.”

She suggested trans rights organisations “should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces”.

The commission is expecting to lay an updated statutory code of practice before Parliament by the summer, and has said it is working “at pace to incorporate the implications of this judgment” into the code for public bodies setting out their duties under the Equality Act.

Baroness Falkner said the commission evaluates when the law is not followed by organisations and can speak to those bodies, or “use enforcement, compliance tools or whatever, we will be continuing to do that”.

Regarding single-sex hospital wards, she said the NHS will “have to change” their 2019 policy, which says that trans people “should be accommodated according to their presentation”.