Some businesses still waiting for final EHRC guidance while firms that moved early to exclude trans people show no sign of backtracking
On Monday, a Dundee employment tribunal ruled a narrow win for Sandie Peggie, the nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. But the lengthy judgment also takes on the pivotal question that has been challenging employers, lawyers and campaign groups since April – does a supreme court judgment mean that transgender people must now be excluded from same-sex facilities that align with their chosen gender? Does it amount to a bathroom ban or not?
The supreme court ruled earlier this year that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Interim advice released by the Equality and Human Rights Commission soon after the judgment in effect banned trans people from using facilities according to their lived gender, and its official guidance is expected to closely reflect that advice.
But the Peggie ruling concluded that the supreme court judgment did not make it inherently unlawful for a trans female, who is biologically male under the Equalities Act, to be given permission to use a female changing room at work. And a week earlier, another employment tribunal reached a similar conclusion, ruling in favour of the trans-inclusive toilets policy at aerospace firm Leonardo UK’s office in Edinburgh.
