Dr Victoria McCloud, the UK’s only trans judge, is planning to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights over the Supreme Court‘s anti-trans ruling on biological sex.
Dr McCloud, who came out as trans in her twenties, said the court had failed to consider human rights arguments that would have been put by trans people and the judgement had left her with the legal “nonsense” of being “two sexes at once”.
Speaking to the BBC over a video link, Dr McCloud said: “Trans people were wholly excluded from this court case. I applied to be heard. Two of us did. We were refused.
“[The court] heard no material going to the question of the proportionality and the impact on trans people. It didn’t hear evidence from us.
“The Supreme Court failed in my view, adequately, to think about human rights points.”
On 16 April, anti-trans rights activists won their Supreme Court challenge over the definition of a woman, which will affect the lives of trans women across the UK.
Writing on the BlueSky social media platform, the Good Law Project said: “[The court] didn’t hear from a single trans person. This ruling sets a dangerous precedent and erases trans women from protections. It puts trans rights back 20 years. We won’t stop fighting for trans rights.”
Backed financially by JK Rowling, who’s now known for spouting controversial posts on social media about the trans community, the gender critical campaign group For Women Scotland said the Equality Act’s definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female.
Five judges from the UK supreme court agreed – ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 does not include trans women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs).
This decision means trans women can no longer sit on public boards in places set aside for women.
In a move widely criticised by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, legal experts, politicians and community peers, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) subsequently published an “interim update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment” on Friday, 25 April. Non-statutory guidance that many experts believe misinterprets the court’s decision, is a huge over reach and undermines trans rights. Scottish Greens called it ‘Harsh, authoritarian and cruel’, the Scottish Trades Union Congress “hugely problematic”.
The guidance, slipped out with minimal consultation with affected communities, suggests blanket exclusions for trans women from women’s spaces – a stance that legal experts warn may itself violate existing equality protections and human rights standards.
Dr McCloud stood down a year ago, saying she could not continue her judicial work amid an increasingly difficult public debate that had led to her being singled out for abuse and criticism.
She added: “[This judgement] has left me two sexes at once, which is a nonsense and ironic, because the Supreme Court said that sex was binary.
“I am a woman for all purposes in law, but [now under this judgement] I’m a man for the Equality Act 2010. So I have to probably guess on any given occasion which sex I am.”
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