The Equity LGBT+ Committee have responded to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission's guidance on implementing the Equality Act (2010), which says trans people must use facilities and services based on their “biological sex”.
In their statement, they highlight that the "guidance will introduce an unworkable climate for both trans and gender-nonconfirming cis people" as well as putting "trans people at risk".
You can write to your MP and ask them to object to the proposed EHRC guidance using this quick online email tool.
Write to your MP nowRead the full statement
We urge our members to write to their MPs, insisting that they object to the proposed EHRC guidance. Accepting it will introduce an unworkable climate for both trans and gender-nonconfirming cis people.
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has delivered its final guidance on implementing the Equality Act (2010). This guidance is to be made law as a statutory instrument by the government, unless MPs object. This guidance is about public services and businesses, but we expect it will serve as a blueprint for workplace/employer guidance in short order.
The guidance says trans people must use facilities and services based on their “biological sex”, ie trans women can only use services for men, and trans men only use services for women. This is to comply with the 2025 Supreme Court Ruling, which the government neither challenged nor clarified through legislation.
Furthermore, the guidance allows challenging of individuals and their exclusion from services based on appearance. For example, a masculine-presenting trans man may be excluded from both male and female gender-based services. He would be forced to use a
‘third space’, which may or may-not exist.
This puts trans people at risk by “outing” them, burdens service providers, and harms disabled people – since it is their spaces that will probably be chosen to double as this ‘third space’.
Equity joins with Unison, the Public and Commercial Services Union, the Good Law Project, Amnesty International, and Disability Rights UK in calling this guidance unworkable. It the poorly-designed outcome of privately-funded legal cases determining law in a vacuum of government inaction.
We urge our members to check whether their MP has signed Early-Day Motion 240 opposing this guidance. If they have not, our members are urged to write to their MP as quickly as possible and express their disapproval of the EHRC guidance. There are fewer than 40 days for MPs to make their disagreement clear.
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