Guidance on how to implement the landmark supreme court ruling on gender is being adapted to lessen its impact on businesses and to ensure it tries to balance single-sex spaces with the lives of transgender people, the Guardian has been told. Lawyers from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are understood to be in discussions with government lawyers over the practicalities of guiding businesses and other institutions about last year's ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only.
Last April, the supreme court issued a ruling confirming that the word sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, not a person's legal gender. This has a wide-reaching impact on how equality law is applied in practice, particularly in providing sex-based rights such as single-sex spaces. Six months later, a draft code on the ruling's implementation was sent by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson.
Individuals will have their own views about the Supreme Court ruling. The Ladies' Pond is open to all women and girls over the age of eight and, according to the lifeguards, trans women have been swimming there for many years without incident.
