GLOBAL human rights charity Amnesty International has intervened on the side of SNP Government ministers in the Supreme Court case over the legal definition of a “woman”.
Issuing a warning about “dangerous misinformation” around trans rights from the media and politicians, the leading organisation said the current legal framework is “essential for trans people to enjoy the full spectrum of human rights each of us is entitled to”.
The Supreme Court will hear the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a ruling scheduled for a later date. It centres on whether the use of the word “woman” in the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 also includes trans women.
For Women Scotland, an anti-trans rights campaign group, is asking the Supreme Court to rule that a trans person with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) does not count as a woman. They argue that SNP Ministers “misdirected themselves in law” by treating trans women as women in the 2018 Act.
However, the Scottish Government have argued that the standard interpretation of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and Equality Act 2010 has been that “the term ‘woman’ … includes a person issued with a full GRC in the acquired gender of female – and excludes a person issued with a full GRC in the acquired gender of male”.
Intervening in the case, Amnesty International took the side of Scottish Ministers, saying it wanted to “set out why legal gender recognition is a human rights issue and why existing protections are right and necessary”.
“In many countries, groups that want to limit the autonomy of women and LGBT+ people are bringing legal challenges to erode human rights protections. Whether it is the right to legal gender recognition, the recognition of LGBT+ families, or the right to access healthcare and abortion services, the arguments tend to be very similar. This is one of those cases.”
They went on: “While we fight to advance human rights, we need to be alert and ready to preserve what we have. Legal gender recognition as it works now is essential for trans people to enjoy the full spectrum of human rights each of us is entitled to, and live free from fear of discrimination.
“Regardless of what we look like, where we come from or how we express our gender identities, human rights apply to everyone, and we all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”
In its submission, Amnesty argues that “the Equality Act provides a process which enables the exclusion of trans people from single sex services, if it is a ‘proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim’, meaning that there is a high threshold to be able to justify exclusion”.
“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim. If the Equality Act did not intend to consider trans women as women, it would not have included a process for exclusion in the first place,” the charity said.
