On 5 August, statutory guidance on single-sex services comes into force across England, Scotland and Wales. Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson has confirmed the date will stand, despite more than 160 MPs signing an Early Day Motion urging the government to reject the code before it was adopted. The Equality and Human Rights Commission's code of practice tells service providers that offering spaces for women and trans women is "very likely" to discriminate against cisgender men, effectively steering trans people towards separate facilities rather than those matching their lived gender.
Campaigners at Good Law Project have called the guidance both discriminatory and unworkable. "The code is not only discriminatory, but utterly unworkable in practice, as so many organisations have repeatedly pointed out," said Jess O'Thomson, the organisation's trans rights lead. "The guidance gets the law wrong, and if service providers uncritically follow it, they may be acting unlawfully. Worse than that, they will be causing immense harm, and helping to strip trans people of their rights." The group is separately appealing a High Court ruling on the EHRC's approach, arguing the outcome could reshape how the guidance is applied in workplaces as well as public services.
It has been an uneasy fortnight for Good Law Project on a second front, too. Its 'Monster' campaign, created by artist Martin Firrell to challenge opposition to trans people's rights and joy, was pulled this week after members of the trans community said it had landed badly. To its credit, the organisation didn't dig in. "We want to apologise for how the 'Monster' campaign has been received by the trans community," executive director Jo Maugham wrote in a statement. "We've heard you, and we've instructed our media partners to take the campaign down." Whatever the campaign's intentions, Maugham was clear about what mattered more: "None of it matters if it damages the trust we enjoy with the trans community, and it has. So it will be taken down today."
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