A United Kingdom Supreme Court ruling on April 16, 2025, threatens the rights of trans people, Human Rights Watch said today. In For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers, the court ruled that "sex" in UK law refers to a person's sex assigned at birth.
The UK has issued gender recognition certificates since 2005, recognizing legal gender changes and enabling people to change documents such as birth certificates and passports. But the court decision, and the UK authorities' reaction, have undermined the gender recognition certificates. Authorities' interpretations of the judgment effectively forced trans people to use sex-segregated public services and facilities according to their sex-assigned at birth, and contrary to their identity and appearance. Trans people can also avoid using these services and facilities altogether, or be forced to use segregated facilities, posing risks to their safety and human rights.
"The judgment in For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers is severely regressive," said Yasmine Ahmed, UK director at Human Rights Watch said. "While implementing this ruling, authorities across the UK should protect trans people's rights by ensuring that services and facilities remain accessible, inclusive, and safe for everyone."
The case concerned the Scottish Government's Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which aimed to simplify the process for individuals to obtain legal recognition of their gender by removing the requirement for a medical diagnosis of "gender dysphoria." The Supreme Court concluded that the only acceptable legal definition of "sex" is the biological sex assigned to a person at birth, and that no adjustments to that legal designation should be recognized by law, even if the person has a gender recognition certificate. The Supreme Court said that the rights of trans people are separately protected from discrimination under the Equalities Act 2010, regardless of whether they have a gender recognition certificate, but it failed to enumerate how that protection can be effectively implemented.
In effect, the court ruling has led to authorities prohibiting trans people from entering single-sex spaces that align with their gender identity even if they have received official recognition of their gender from the government. The Equality and Human Rights Commission issued guidance on the judgment without adequate consultation, further entrenching the idea that trans people should only be treated according to their sex assigned at birth. The ruling has led to authorities excluding trans people from single-sex spaces that align with their gender identity and treating them in such circumstances as having the gender that corresponds to their assigned sex at birth.
The ruling also comes in the context of an often toxic debate about trans rights in the UK, in which trans people are portrayed as a threat to the safety of others and their views and lived experience are ignored, Human Rights Watch said.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the UK is a party, provides for everyone's right to recognition before the law, and the right to privacy. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in charge of interpreting the ICCPR, has called on governments to guarantee the rights of transgender people, including the right to legal recognition of their gender, and for countries to repeal abusive and disproportionate requirements for legal recognition of gender identity.
In 2002, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Goodwin v. United Kingdom that the "conflict between social reality and law" that arises when the government does not recognize a person's gender identity constitutes a "serious interference with private life." Since then, the court has ruled that various abusive requirements for gender recognition, like sterilization and other medical interventions, violate trans people's human rights. Momentum around legally recognizing people's gender identity based on self-declaration has been growing, with 20 countries now enshrining a rights-based process in law.
Other high courts around the world have considered the issue of legal recognition of transgender people and issued rulings that protect their rights. For example, the Supreme Court of Nepal in 2024 ruled that Rukshana Kapali, a transgender woman, should be legally recognized on all documents as a woman without having to submit to medical verification. In 2015, the Colombian Constitutional Court overturned a previous decision that had found sex to be an objective matter of fact that could be determined by external authorities. Instead, the court held that there was no "true" or objective gender: it is a matter for individuals to autonomously decide and for states to recognize.
The rights of intersex people are also threatened by the UK Supreme Court ruling. Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that fall outside of classical definitions of "male" and "female," often leading to abusive non-consensual surgical interventions in infancy. Some intersex people grow up to identify as their birth-assigned sex, others do not. "Sex testing" methods, most often used in sports, to determine which people are women have proven to be rife with abuse, discrimination, and racism, while being based on spurious scientific claims.
The British Medical Association (BMA) condemned the For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers ruling, saying it was "reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical." The BMA noted "the existence of intersex people and their right to exist in the gender identity that matches their sense of self, regardless of whether this matches any identity assigned to them at birth" and that "sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people." University centers working on gender and sexuality across the UK joined in their condemnation of the judgment.
"It is now up to Parliament to amend the Equalities Act to make clear that sex-based protections apply to trans people with a gender recognition certificate," Ahmed said. "The UK once was a global leader on LGBT rights, and that reputation is now blemished by a regressive court ruling and its implementation that assaults the dignity of trans and intersex people."
