The United Kingdom’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is about to issue guidelines banning transgender people from single-sex facilities—and, in some cases, even those that match their sex assigned at birth, The Advocate noted, citing The Times.
The commission’s guidance is reportedly in compliance with the nation’s recent Supreme Court ruling that stated, in essence, that trans women are not women.
The policy will impact trans people’s access to restrooms or changing rooms regarding facilities that provide public services, including schools, hospital wards, domestic-violence shelters, prisons and some stores, among other places.
The regulations also said that a trans person could be barred from spaces that do match their biological sex, claiming that “a legitimate aim for excluding a trans person from a separate or single-sex service for their own biological sex might be to prevent alarm or distress for other service users.”Stonewall Scotland condemned the EHRC’s guidance in a statement released soon after the policy was first proposed, saying that it “risks encouraging organizations to implement blanket exclusionary policies, which will impact on trans people’s rights to non-discrimination in enjoyment of their human rights and may open up litigation risks.”In April, UK Department of Education’s Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson said that trans women should use bathrooms that correspond with their gender assigned at birth; however, she stopped short of explicitly saying that trans women should use men’s restrooms, according to Them.
