It’s always been about our erasure – Part Three

As the official regulator charged with upholding the Equality Act of 2010, the EHRC holds significant authority. However it’s behaviour following April’s Supreme Court ruling (FWS V Scottish Ministers) were widely seen as legitimising the most extreme, exclusionary interpretations of the decision, which created a climate of fear and added to the sever distrust trans groups and allies already had in the body, especially under the chair of Baroness Falkner. Amelia’s Angels has highlighted this on several occasions, including with our own statement withdrawing support for the EHRC along with groups like TACC.

The Insidious Pushing of Exclusion

The actions of the EHRC went beyond mere interpretation:

1. Mandate for “Birth Sex” Policing: The EHRC’s guidance suggested that service providers could request “evidential proof of birth sex,” which was all at once intrusive and discriminatory, effectively requiring trans people to publicly ‘out’ themselves to use basic services. It went so far as being against Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. It is also unlawful to demand a trans persons GRC.
2. Challenging the GRA: The guidance was updated to state that a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) “does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010,” drastically undermining the legal significance of the GRC and reinforcing the ‘biological sex’ definition across the board.
3. Contradicting Human Rights Bodies: European Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, wrote to Parliament warning that the EHRC’s approach risked breaching trans people’s human rights, specifically calling out the push for “blanket practices or policies” of exclusion.

FOI Requests and the Sex Matters Connection

The aggressive nature of the EHRC towards trans people and trans rights, has led to significant scrutiny regarding who is influence them, particularly outgoing chair Baroness Falkner.

• FOI Request Confirmation: Various Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have been submitted (e.g., in July 2025) specifically sought details on meetings and correspondence between the Chair of the EHRC, Baroness Falkner, and the campaigning organisation, Sex Matters.
• Significance of the Relationship: Sex Matters is a prominent “gender-critical” lobby group that advocates for the legal definition of ‘sex’ to be based strictly on biological sex assigned at birth and campaigns for the exclusion of trans women from women-only spaces.
• The fact that FOI requests have been necessary to probe the close relationship between the head of the statutory equality regulator and an anti-trans campaign group has fuelled long-standing concerns that the EHRC’s leadership is not acting as an impartial regulator, but is instead captured and coordinating its agenda with one specific side of a politically charged debate.

The EHRC, under Baroness Falkner’s leadership, was instrumental in immediately translating a narrow legal judgment into a widespread, enforced policy of trans exclusion, using its authority to push for an interpretation that went much further than the Supreme Court ruling itself.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling a divide began in the business sector. Some moved to adopt exclusionary policies – often misrepresenting the legal implications, while others responded with organised resistance to the EHRC’s draft Code of Practice, challenging its practicality and legality.

Misinterpretation and Capitulation

The Supreme Court only confirmed the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 for certain legal purposes; it did not mandate the exclusion of trans people from single-sex services. However, lobbying and media campaign by groups like Sex Matters, combined with the EHRC’s initial interim guidance (published April 2025), created a climate of fear and much legal uncertainty.

A notable example of capitulation was Virgin Active, which reversed its trans-inclusive changing room policy in August 2025.

This demonstrated how the threat of legal action, was enough to push businesses to abandon inclusive practices, substituting instead, corporate self-protection for community inclusion.

The political reaction to the Supreme Court ruling and the EHRC’s draft Code of Practice saw significant pushback from parties and individuals across the political spectrum, all of whom challenged the EHRC’s impartiality and questioned the democratic legitimacy of the guidance process.

The Core of the Parliamentary Concern

The primary concern revolved around the risk of the statutory guidance becoming law without a proper debate or vote. Under the Equality Act 2006, the Code of Practice is laid before Parliament for a 40-day scrutiny period, during which it can be rejected only if a “resolution to disapprove” is passed in either House. Without the Government scheduling a debate, the Code could automatically take effect, a process critics feared would bypass democracy and rubber-stamp an exclusionary policy.

As well as the political battle in Westminster, high-level international scrutiny and domestic legal challenges lent weight to the arguments of parliamentarians:

This three-part investigation has traced the trajectory of an exclusionary policy movement: from a specific Supreme Court ruling being deliberately misapplied, through the procedural failures and political capture of a national watchdog, to the current crisis of institutional exclusion. The progression, from a narrow legal decision to blanket exclusion in gyms, hospitals, and public services, demonstrates that this campaign has never been about simply protecting cisgender women.

If the goal were genuine protection, the groups at the forefront would not be aligning themselves with entities whose ultimate goals are fundamentally anti-women. The alignment between UK anti-trans organisations and radical far-right US groups exposes the true nature of this movement:

This highlights the profound danger of ignoring warnings from those directly affected. The current crisis was not a surprise; it is a predictable outcome that could and should have been prevented. The reality is that trans people repeatedly foresaw this endgame, only to be dismissed as alarmist.

The chilling reality is the the trans community repeatedly foresaw this endgame, only to be dismissed as alarmist. The final word belongs to one of those voices, the founder of Amelia’s Angels and my partner, Ami, who now watches her predictions materialise, piece by piece. Ami concludes:

“I’ve been shouting about this for years. I never wanted to be right, but I could see where it was all heading. I even predicted the order it would happen in 2025: The sports bans, the restrictions on access to spaces, the obsession with digital ID and what it could mean for us. These aren’t isolated things, they are patterns, and they mirror the US. I remember saying a while back, probably when they first started the case about the definition of woman in equality law, ‘this is how it starts.’ And now it’s happening, piece by piece. I just wish people had listened to me and many others when it was still preventable.”