NATIONAL: UK Supreme Court issues judgement on 'What is a woman?'

The United Kingdm's Supreme Court has ruled in favour of For Women Scotland in its case against the Scottish government.

Speaking after the judgement was announced, Laoise de Brún BL, CEO and founder of The Countess, said: “Comhgairdeas to our sisters in Scotland who have taken their challenge to Scottish government all the way to the UK Supreme Court and finally succeeded in their legal challenge.

"The Scottish government claimed that once a man applies for and is granted a gender recognition certificate that that man is a woman for the purposes of the sex-based protections under the Equality Act.

“We at The Countess, and campaigners across Ireland, are overjoyed at the news that the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of retaining sex-based protections granted to women and girls under the Equality Act 2010. For far too long the conflict between the Gender Recognition Act, which seemingly allows one to change one’s sex, and the exceptions in Equality law under the gender grounds, which provide protections based on biological sex have caused chaos in law, in science, and in daily
life.

“Sex is binary and immutable. It is not possible to change sex and finally we have legal clarity on this issue, at least in our
neighbouring jurisdiction. As we have seen, where UK test cases lead the world follows, after all it was Keira Bell’s judicial review of The UK Tavistock Clinic that led to the banning of puberty blockers in the UK and elsewhere. It is high time that the Irish Government reformed the GRA to exclude all single-sex spaces – including prisons as per the Gender Recognition (Amendment) (Prisons) Bill 2023, which was brought before the Dáil last year – and offered statutory guidance to sport national governing bodies and clubs that they may lawfully exclude males from female sport.”

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