Image source, Getty Images

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay says the Supreme Court ruling is a victory for women across the United Kingdom, a victory for common sense – and an abject humiliation for the SNP.

“(Scottish first minister) John Swinney now needs to respect women’s rights and get rid of the dangerous gender policies which have become embedded in Scotland’s public institutions," Findlay says.

“This ruling should sound the death knell once and for all for Nicola Sturgeon’s reckless self-ID plans, which Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens shamefully backed to the hilt at Holyrood."

The Scottish government is yet to comment on the ruling.

A campaign group says the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a biological understanding of sex.

"This ruling restores freedom of association to lesbians and allows us to exclude biological men from our groups, spaces and associations," the group, Scottish Lesbians, says.

"Lesbians have been at the forefront of the harm caused by the confusion around the Equality and Gender Recognition Acts."

They add: "This case has been an existential one for lesbians and we glad to finally have clarity over the law."

For those just joining us, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

• The decision came following a lengthy legal case between the Scottish government and the women's rights group For Women Scotland, regarding equalities legislation.
• Judge Lord Hodge said the decision was not "a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another".
• However the court ruled the Equality Act 2010 would be “incoherent and impracticable” if the "certificated sex" view - letting a person with a gender recognition certificate be classed as that gender - took hold.
• The ruling said that "the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man."
• There was an outpouring of emotion following the verdict, as women's rights campaigners celebrated.
• For Women Scotland said the judges had said what they always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex.
• The UK government stated the decision provides clarity for hospitals, refuges and sports clubs.
• Charity Scottish Trans asked trans people "not to panic" about the news.

Reacting to the Supreme Court ruling, a UK government spokesperson says: "We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex.

"This ruling brings clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs.

"Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government."

Image source, PA Media

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has congratulated For Women Scotland and says the ruling is a "victory".

She says: "Saying 'trans women are women' was never true in fact, and now isn't true in law either.

"This is a victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious.

"Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex."

Image source, Getty Images

Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman has given her reaction to the ruling.

She says: “This is a deeply concerning ruling for human rights and a huge blow to some of the most marginalised people in our society.

“It could remove important protections and will leave many trans people and their loved ones deeply anxious and worried about how their lives will be affected and about what will come next.

“Trans people just want to be able to live their lives like any of us, without the fear of prejudice or violence, but today they have been badly let down."

Chapman adds: “We will always stand up for human rights, dignity and respect for all people. We will stand with the trans community today, tomorrow and always.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says it is happy with the court's decision, but needs more time to consider the implications in full.

Chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner says: “We are pleased that this judgement addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces, and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations."

She adds that the EHRC did not receive the judgement in advance and says it will make a more detailed statement later.

Image source, Getty Images

Former Labour MP Harriet Harman has praised the Supreme Court for "correctly" interpreting the Equality Act in today's judgement.

"Single sex spaces for women are important & can exclude trans women but only where necessary", she writes in a social media post.

"The Act, & ruling, protects rights of women while also respecting the rights of trans women."

Harman, who now chairs a women's rights group, was involved in drafting the Equality Act, and she says today's ruling gives "effect to our intention when drafting it".

The long-running legal dispute began with a bill passed at Holyrood in 2018 which aimed to ensure gender balance on public sector boards.

Lobby group For Women Scotland complained that ministers had included trans people as part of the quotas in that law.

The court concluded that a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate does not come within the definition of a “woman” in relation to the sex discrimination section of the Equality Act 2010.

However, the panel added that there was nothing in its judgement which had intended to discourage the appointment of trans people to public boards or to minimise the importance of addressing their under-representation on such boards.

The judgement reads: “The issue here is only whether the appointment of a trans woman who has a GRC counts as the appointment of a woman and so counts towards achieving the goal set in the gender representation objective, namely that the board has 50% of non-executive members who are women. In our judgement it does not.”

This ruling goes beyond what For Women Scotland had hoped forpublished at 10:55 British Summer Time 16 April

10:55 BST 16 April

Philip Sim
BBC Scotland political correspondent, at the Supreme Court

The judges stressed that this ruling should not be read as a triumph for one group in society over another, but For Women Scotland were clearly the ones celebrating their win.

There were tears and hugs in the courtroom, then a bottle of champagne was cracked open outside.

This ruling goes beyond what they had hoped for - it is an unambiguous statement from the court that sex-based rights under the Equality Act are based on biological sex.

It’s important to stress that this does not wipe away protections for trans people; the characteristic of gender reassignment remains in place.

But this is a landmark moment in the gender debate. And it’s one which the campaigners are going to use to press the government over its wider policies and guidance. There will inevitably be questions for Scottish ministers, who have lost in the highest court in the land.

Having completed its six-year journey through the legal arena, this often-contentious debate is heading back into the political one.

Image source, UK Supreme Court

It took Lord Hodge 16 minutes and 46 seconds to deliver just a summary of today's judgement.

The full document is 88 pages long.

The judgement, which you can read for yourself, external, outlines the reasons behind today's ruling that the terms "woman" and "sex" in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

Image source, Reuters

Outside the Supreme Court, Susan Smith of For Women Scotland says: "What our politicians need to get their heads around is this is the law.

"They need to stop putting faulty guidance into schools and hospitals."

"There is going to be an ongoing fight," she says, adding: "Now we have a really concrete basis for going forward."

Lord Hodge continued his nine points by saying the fourth point is that "as a matter of ordinary language" cases relating to sex discrimination can "only be interpreted" as referring to biological women.

The fifth point stated that the court rejected the suggestion that words like women can be "variable". If references to pregnancy were "only" for biological women but other references in the legislation were for "certificated sex" then the "coherence" of the legislation would be undermined.

The sixth point states that the Scottish government's interpretation of the Act would "create two sub-groups" with trans people possessing a gender recognition certificate having more rights than those who did not. There would be "no obvious means" of distinguishing between sub-groups, as details on who had a certificate would be private, he said.

Image source, PA Media

Edinburgh-based trans rights charity Scottish Trans says it is urging people "not to panic" after a ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

"There will be lots of commentary coming out quickly that is likely to deliberately overstate the impact that this decision is going to have on all trans people's lives," the charity writes on social media platform Bluesky.

"We'll say more as soon as we're able to. Please look out for yourselves and each other today," the statement adds.

The Supreme Court says its interpretation should not remove protection from transgender people, whether or not they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

It adds: “Trans people are protected from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment.”

The ruling also says trans women can claim sex discrimination because they are perceived to be women.

A GRC is not required to give this legal protection.

Image source, Getty Images

"This has been a really, really long road," says Susan Smith, the co-founder of For Women Scotland.

She says: "Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex.

"Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme Court for this ruling."

Image source, PA Media

Lord Hodge outlined nine reasons why the judges ruled as they did.

The first is that the Equalities Act (EA) provides group-based protections against discrimination on the grounds of sex and gender reassignment.

The second point was that the EA must be implemented in a "clear and consistent" way.

The third point was that interpreting sex as 'certificated sex' would create "heterogenous groupings" by cutting across definitions of man and woman in the EA in an "incoherent" way.

In an 88-page ruling, Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler said: "The definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.

"Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men.

"Although the word 'biological' does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman.

"These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation.

"Men and women are on the face of the definition only differentiated as a grouping by the biology they share with their group."

The Supreme Court ruling, delivered by Lord Hodge, concluded that the meaning of the terms “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to "biological sex".

It says that any other interpretation would make the Act “incoherent and impracticable”.

The summary reads: “Therefore, a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate in the female gender does not come within the definition of a ‘woman’ under the Equality Act 2010 and the statutory guidance issued by the Scottish ministers is incorrect.”

Campaigners and supporters of For Women Scotland have been celebrating as they emerge from the Supreme Court by singing “women’s rights are human rights”.

There's been hugging and tears among some of the campaigners.

One woman describes those who brought the case all the way to the Supreme Court as “she-roes”.