England: Councils resist EHRC single-sex guidance as legal challenges begin

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) updated code of practice, which took effect yesterday, follows last year’s Supreme Court ruling that “sex” in the Equality Act refers to biological sex.

Six London boroughs – Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark and Waltham Forest – issued a joint statement pledging to keep services “inclusive” and warning the guidance “will feel like an attack” on transgender and non-binary residents.

In a joint letter, the councils said: “Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are fundamentally valid.”

Describing the code as “harmful to the rights of trans people”, they added: “We won’t put our staff in the impossible position of policing entry to public spaces.”

Hackney has reportedly been served with a legal challenge over its alleged failure to provide female-only services, while Lambeth councillors previously backed a motion opposing implementation of the code. Islington Council described the guidance as “contradictory, poorly developed and risks creating a climate of suspicion of trans people”.

Bristol City Council said services could continue admitting people according to their gender identity, provided they were not described as female-only but instead labelled “single-gender” or “trans-inclusive”.

Meanwhile, Wendy Stephenson and Phoebe Beedell of the Women of Wessex group are pursuing discrimination and harassment claims against Bristol City Council after being suspended from council meetings for six months when they raised concerns about its trans inclusion policy.

Mary-Ann Stephenson, chair of the EHRC, told Times Radio there was “potentially a degree of performativity” in councils’ opposition to the code.

“Once they talk to the legal department, they will realise that they are obliged to follow the law,” she said.

Akua Reindorf KC, a former EHRC commissioner who helped draft the code, said: “It’s either performative or it’s uninformed. The law is the law, the guidance is not the law; it just tells you how to comply with the law. If they don’t want to comply with the law then they will need to change it, which means asking parliament to amend the Equality Act.”

The Good Law Project has launched a judicial review of the code, backed by Labour MPs including Nadia Whittome, arguing it amounts to a “blanket prohibition on trans-inclusive gendered services”.

A government spokesperson said: “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on ongoing legal proceedings – but everyone should follow the law.”