Good morning. The supreme court’s judgment was 88 pages long, but in much of the coverage today it has been boiled down to a very blunt conclusion: “The concept of sex is binary”, and as far as equality legislation is concerned, trans women are not women.
That is an oversimplification of a complex ruling yesterday that was careful to say it did not seek to delegitimise the existence of trans people, and insisted it did not represent the triumph of one group over another.
Whatever the court says, though, gender-critical campaigners and many newspaper front pages were clear: this constituted “victory”. Marion Calder, a director of For Women Scotland, said: “If there is a female sign on the door, that is now a single-sex space. That is crystal clear as a result of today’s ruling.”
The decision was meanwhile greeted with deep trepidation and dismay by many trans people, who wondered how such a verdict had been reached without the evidence of a single trans woman being heard by the court.
There have been sensible warnings against over-interpreting the ruling – but there is little doubt that it will have lasting consequences. Today’s newsletter explains what the case was about, what the court did and didn’t say, and what it all means in practice. Here are the headlines.