UK's first trans judge plans human rights challenge to Supreme Court gender ruling that the definition of woman is biological

Daily Mail​

29-04-2025

Britain's first transgender judge is planning to take the Government to the European Court of Human Rights over the Supreme Court 's landmark biological sex ruling.
Victoria McCloud - who stepped down last year after making a series of controversial statements - claimed the judgement violated her human rights and left her feeling 'contained and segregated'.
It comes after a unanimous Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that 'woman' and 'man' refer to biological women and men and that 'the concept of sex is binary'.
Ms McCloud said she intends to apply to the ECHR to bring action against the UK for infringement of her Article 6 rights, which guarantee the right to a fair trial in both criminal and civil matters.
She said: 'Trans people were wholly excluded from this court case. I applied to be heard. Two of us did. We were refused.
'[The court] heard no material going to the question of the proportionality and the impact on trans people. It didn't hear evidence from us.
'The Supreme Court failed in my view, adequately, to think about human rights points.'
The Supreme Court can consider outside arguments from 'interveners' at its discretion but rarely allows individuals to intervene and often rejects them if it will hear the same arguments from other groups.
In the biological sex case, the Supreme Court did consider arguments on trans issues from the human rights campaign group Amnesty International.
Ms McCloud, a former High Court Master, said that her Gender Recognition Certificate [GRC], which she obtained after she legally transitioned, should mean she is defined as a woman in law.
This would run counter to the Supreme Court judgement, which clarified that under the Equality Act sex is defined by biology and not a £6 certificate for the purposes of the Act.
Ms McCloud told the BBC: 'Just as the prime minister didn't know what a woman was, actually the Supreme Court don't know because they haven't defined biological sex.
'The answer [in my view] is that a woman in law is someone with the letter F on her birth certificate.'
However women's rights campaigners said the Supreme Court judgement is clear that sex is biological.
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at human rights charity Sex Matters which provided evidence in the case, said Ms McCloud's attempt to intervene 'was always misguided because the Supreme Court rarely allows individuals to intervene'.
She added: 'The Scottish Government, the respondent in the Supreme Court case, has already said it accepts the ruling. The case is over and there is no obvious route for [Ms McCloud] to take the UK government to the ECHR.'
Following the ruling the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has issued new guidance stating unequivocally that in workplaces and places open to the public 'trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women's facilities'.
Ms McCloud claimed that, far from providing clarity, the judgment and subsequent guidance has 'brought chaos'.
'[This judgement] has left me two sexes at once, which is a nonsense and ironic, because the Supreme Court said that sex was binary,' she told the BBC.
'I am a woman for all purposes in law, but [now under this judgement] I'm a man for the Equality Act 2010. So I have to probably guess on any given occasion which sex I am.'
Ms McCloud will have six months to apply to the ECHR and will have to prove that she has suffered been the victim of an alleged violation of the Convention and suffered 'significant disadvantage' as a result.
If she is successful then this would likely provide significant ammunition to Tory calls to leave the ECHR following frustrations at a series of its findings.
Ms McCloud transitioned in the 1990s and became the first transgender barrister and judge in the UK. She stood down a year ago, saying she could not continue her work amid the increasingly fraught public debate.
In her resignation letter last year, she likened herself to civil rights activist Rosa Parks, writing: 'Rosa Parks's choice of seat was political because of the colour of her skin.
'More prosaically, for me, I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary, by continuing to let me be a judge, is now at risk of being political.'
It comes as junior doctors at a British Medical Association (BMA) conference today 'condemned' Supreme Court's ruling that sex is biological.
The union's junior doctors, now known as resident doctors, passed a motion which states: 'This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term 'woman'.'
The motion adds: 'We recognise as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people.'
While the motion was passed by the conference it will not become BMA policy unless it is approved by all members at the union's annual meeting later this year.
A BMA spokesman said: 'The BMA respects trans patients' dignity, autonomy and human rights and continues to believe that trans doctors, NHS workers and patients deserve dignity, safety, and equitable access to healthcare and healthcare facilities.'