\n<\/p>\n
The equalities watchdog has submitted its formal guidance about how institutions should respond to the landmark supreme court ruling on transgender people\u2019s rights, with its chair admitting it would be \u201cdifficult\u201d for many to shape workable policies.<\/p>\n
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has handed its formal guidance to Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities as well as the education secretary, who must now decide whether to accept it.<\/p>\n
One EHRC source said that while the decision-making on the guidance was restricted to a small group of people around the group\u2019s outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, the expectation was that it would closely reflect interim advice released by the watchdog in April.<\/p>\n
This alarmed transgender groups, who said its guidance that the supreme court\u2019s ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based just on biological sex meant transgender people should not be allowed to use toilets of the gender they live as, and that in some cases they could not use toilets of their birth sex, would effectively exclude transgender people from much of the public realm.<\/p>\n
It also said that organisations such as sports clubs or hospitals could ask to see someone\u2019s birth certificate if there is \u201cgenuine concern\u201d about what biological sex they are.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Friday morning, Falkner, who departs the role in December, said she accepted it would not necessarily be easy for public bodies to turn the guidance into practical rules and guidelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be difficult for duty bearers, service providers, to adapt a ruling which is quite black and white into practical steps according to their own circumstances and their own organisation, which is why we\u2019ve always emphasised they should take their own advice as well as adhering to our code,\u201d she told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme.<\/p>\n
Falkner, a crossbench peer, said of the advice, which has a statutory basis: \u201cEverybody I speak to, every institution I speak to, says: \u2018Can you tell us what we\u2019re supposed to do?\u2019 That\u2019s wrong \u2026 they should have been doing it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The guidance follows a consultation in which more than 50,000 responses were gathered over a period lasting six weeks \u2013 extended from an initial two weeks after MPs expressed worries about what they said was a rushed timetable.<\/p>\n
Deciding on whether and how to accept the guidance will be a hugely complex and sensitive issue for Phillipson\u2019s office, with no timetable set for when it will happen. The document was described by one official as \u201chugely complicated\u201d.<\/p>\n
When the supreme court ruling was published in April, Keir Starmer praised it for offering \u201creal clarity\u201d on a vexed issue, saying organisations and institutions would now be able to turn this into practical guidelines.<\/p>\n
But a number of Labour MPs, as well as campaign groups, have expressed alarm that what they fear could be an overly fast and literal interpretation of the ruling could have major consequences for how transgender people live their lives.<\/p>\n
Jude Guaitamacchi, the founder of the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, said the EHRC had \u201crushed\u201d the consultation and was proposing what could end up being \u201ca trans bathroom ban\u201d.<\/p>\n
They said: \u201cIt\u2019s up to the government what happens next. Bridget Phillipson could fix this mess tomorrow. Waving this through this would be Labour\u2019s Section 28 moment and define their legacy on LGBT+ rights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The equalities watchdog has submitted its formal guidance about how institutions should respond to the landmark supreme court ruling on transgender people\u2019s rights, with its chair admitting it would be \u201cdifficult\u201d for many to shape workable policies. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has handed its formal guidance to Bridget Phillipson, the minister for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[6999,160,6996,11793,6998,11794,4172,761,702,571,7033,159,570,2019],"class_list":{"0":"post-19266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-commission","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-ehrc","11":"tag-equalities","12":"tag-equality","13":"tag-formal","14":"tag-guidance","15":"tag-human","16":"tag-rights","17":"tag-ruling","18":"tag-submits","19":"tag-supreme","20":"tag-transgender","21":"tag-watchdog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}