Suella Braverman attacked what she described as a "rights culture" in Britain that did not exist before 1998, one year after Tony Blair became Prime Minister.
The Attorney General criticised equalities experts on "vastly inflated salaries" who have "misconstrued and weaponised" equality laws to fight those who challenge their views as perpetrators of hate speech.
In a speech to the think-tank Policy Exchange, Ms Braverman claimed many institutions are "misinterpreting" the Equality Act leaving many going "beyond the law", pressured by "moral obligations".
"We now have a ‘rights culture’ in a way that did not exist prior to 1998.
"Aspects of this are causing confusion and distress. In my view, many of the difficult cases we have seen, have been symptomatic of this long tail of Blairism," Ms Braverman moaned.
Schools do not have to allow trans pupils to switch their uniforms or use the preferred pronouns of a child, she told the audience.
"It is therefore wrong for schools to suggest that they have legal obligations which mean that they must address children by their preferred pronouns, names, or admit them to opposite sex toilets, sport teams, or dormitories.
"A right not to suffer discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment is not the same thing as a right of access to facilities provided for the opposite sex," Ms Braverman added.
While her speech appeared to suggest the need to address rights that had been misunderstood, she still criticised civil servants who spent "1000s of hours of their taxpayer funded time last year attending lectures on unconscious bias training".
Ms Braverman's address followed an op-ed she wrote for the Telegraph, insisting schools should only affirm the gender preference of a child where it differs from their birth sex “upon the advice of an independent medical practitioner”.
She wrote: “Many schools and teachers believe – incorrectly – that they are under an absolute legal obligation to treat children who are gender questioning according to the preference of the child.
“I want to make it clear that it is possible, within the law, for schools to refuse to use the preferred opposite-sex pronouns of a child.”
Ms Braverman said it is also lawful for schools to refuse to allow a biologically male child to wear a girls’ uniform or participate in girls’ single-sex sports, while single-sex schools have the right to not admit a child of the opposite biological sex who identifies as transgender.
“When it comes to gender-questioning children, we should always have compassion. At the same time, our compassion should never blind us to the harm it is possible to do to children by misplaced affirmation.
“True diversity and equality are at risk when we divide everyone into separate groups and then silence views which may challenge those group identities. This is not what democracy is about and it is not what the law requires.”
Ms Braverman has long thrown herself into battling culture wars for the right of the Conservative party.
She previously said she hoped to get rid of “woke rubbish” and return to “a country where describing a man and a woman in terms of biology does not mean that you’re going to lose your job”.
