By Jo Bartosch
Thanks to last month’s Supreme Court ruling, sex is now back on the workplace agenda. No longer a dirty word, it has reclaimed its legal meaning.
Unsurprisingly, this has upended the business models of self-identified inclusion gurus. The consultants and charities who told employers to erase the word “mother” from maternity policies and warned against single-sex spaces are now doubling down. Some of those who bought their dodgy advice clearly feel they have no recourse other than to howl about injustice; generating clouds of outrage to obscure their red faces.
If you’ve been on LinkedIn since the For Women Scotland ruling was handed down, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Court had ordered the detention of every trans-identified person in the UK. From breathless declarations of “solidarity” to hand-wringing over “harm”, posts ranged in tone from lip-wobbling sobs to full hostage video.
Take Mandeep Rupra, director of equity at Citizens Advice, who declared she had a “heavy heart” and pledged solidarity with her “trans siblings.” Not a word about the far greater number of employees — including LGB ones — whose rights were clarified by the ruling. Others, including those employed across the NHS and statutory bodies, vowed to lobby MPs and campaign to change the law. These dramatic statements are nothing more than desperate acts of reputational self-harm.
Let’s be clear: the ruling removed no rights. Trans-identified people remain protected under the Equality Act on the basis of gender reassignment. In fact, it clarified that sex-based protections extend even to those who identify as trans — meaning, for example, that pregnant women who identify as men still have maternity rights.
What the judgment did do — sensibly and legally — was reaffirm that biological sex is a protected characteristic. Crucially for LGB Alliance, this includes the legal rights afforded to lesbians and gay men that depend on distinguishing between male and female. We now have legal certainty that single-sex spaces and associations are lawful. That businesses are decrying this is not only a symptom of corporate incompetence, but of institutional homophobia.
The reason we’re here is simple: for years companies fell over themselves to prove their progressive credentials by outsourcing HR policy to activists who couldn’t tell their legal obligations from their elbows. These same activists — who told businesses that men could be lesbians, and that dissenters should be shown the door — are now telling employers to ignore the Supreme Court. It’s like hiring a flat-earther to run your space programme.
Instead of pausing to review unlawful guidance and bring policies in line with the law, too many professionals are digging in. They’re effectively signalling that they intend to carry on as if the ruling never happened. In any other area — tax, health and safety, employment law — that level of legal defiance would end careers.
Employees who’ve been sidelined, silenced, and in some cases harassed for stating the obvious — that sex is important — are unlikely to receive apologies. But the very least they are owed is for their employers and colleagues not to publicly denounce a ruling that affirms their legal rights. Moreover, stoking fear in trans-identified staff, whose legal protections remain untouched, is not just dishonest — it is profoundly unkind.
The magical thinking of gender identity now sits where it belongs: alongside horoscopes, healing crystals and homeopathy. You’re entitled to believe in it. You’re just not entitled to compel others to pretend it’s true.
Now is the time for senior leaders, legal teams and HR departments to wise up. Re-read the Equality Act. Ask yourselves whether your policies reflect the law — or last year’s activist slogans.
But this isn’t just a job for the boardroom. Every employee has a role to play. Ask why your company is still prioritising the talking points of lobbyists while ignoring a unanimous ruling from the highest court in the land. Ask why women’s and LGB people’s sex-based rights are always last in line. Demand clarity. Demand fairness. Demand compliance with the law.
This ruling was not a punishment. It was a clarifying correction. It reaffirmed the rights of women, lesbians and gay men to speak, to organise, and to exist — not in someone else’s ideology, but in material reality.
Pretending otherwise doesn’t make you inclusive. It makes you complicit.