U.K. Top Court Says Trans Women Are Not Legally Women Under Equality Act

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2. Political considerations aside, this seems a wrong read of the actual act.

I took an admittedly quick read of the uk 2010 equality act.

The law protects against discrimination based on, among other things, sex or being transgender.

The definition of sex in this act refers to "man" and "woman" (which unfortunately excludes non-binary) but does not clarify if this is meant to refer to gender, dna, birth certificate, or whatever.

The definition of transgender is:

"7 Gender reassignment
(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

This clearly makes reference to the notion that sex can be "reassigned". I.e., someone assigned male at birth who transitions to female is not simply adopting characteristics of the other sex, they are actually having their sex reassigned, I.e., changed.

It seems clear to me that the intent of this definition is to say that a transgender person has the sex they transitioned to, not their "biological sex" (which is not a defined term in this act, and an ambiguous term if you get into the biological details).

There may be some ambiguity as to exactly *when* during their transition a transgender person is officially reassigned, but it seems clear that a change of sex is contemplated by this definition.

In short, trans women are indeed women by this act.

I believe the judges erred in this case, even ignoring the politics.