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The recognition of non-binary gender identities in EU law: Reflections against the background of For Women Scotland
In its highly controversial For Women Scotland (FWS) judgment of 16 April 2025, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSC) ruled that the terms 'sex', 'woman' and 'man' in the UK Equality Act of 2010 (EA 2010) are to be understood solely in their biological sense for the purposes of sex discrimination.
- Author
- Konstantinos Lamprinoudis and Christa Tobler
- Date
- 22 September 2026
Consequently, individuals who live according to the gender role opposite to the sex they were assigned at birth, whether or not they wish to undergo any medical intervention (defined as 'transgender', Agius and Tobler, p. 12), do not have the protected characteristic of 'sex' but that of 'gender reassignment'. On the other hand, a biological understanding of 'sex' also entails that the latter comes in two versions only, i.e. female or male. In the UKSC’s own words, 'the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man' (para. 171).
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