A group of left-wing councils have joined forces to resist the new single-sex guidance designed to protect women’s spaces.
Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat authorities are refusing to implement the EHRC’s code of practice, which took effect on Wednesday.
Six London boroughs – Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark and Waltham Forest – issued a joint pledge to keep services “inclusive.”
Their leaders warned the rules “will feel like an attack” on transgender and “non-binary” locals.
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In a joint letter, they said: “Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are fundamentally valid.”
They claimed the guidance is “harmful to the rights of trans people” and said: “We won’t put our staff in the impossible position of policing entry to public spaces.”
Lambeth councillors had already passed a motion opposing the code, while Islington branded it “contradictory, poorly developed and risks creating a climate of suspicion of trans people”.
Hackney is believed to have already received a formal legal challenge over its alleged failure to offer female-only services – apparently the first such action since the code took effect.
In Bristol, the council said services could admit people based on gender identity, but must be labelled “single-gender” or “trans-inclusive” rather than female-only.
Two campaigners from the Women of Wessex group are bringing a discrimination and harassment claim against Bristol City Council after being barred from meetings for six months over concerns they raised about trans inclusion policy.
One, Wendy Stephenson, told The Times she was “delighted that we have a merits hearing scheduled and that the truth of the matter will be heard in court”.
She added she was “disheartened” by the council’s updated policy, warning they had “learnt nothing”.
Bethany Hutchison, the nurse who won a case against the Darlington Memorial Hospital over single-sex changing rooms, told The Times: “It cannot be right that responsibility for upholding the law is left to individual women who must risk their careers, reputations, livelihoods and wellbeing by challenging powerful public institutions.”
Maya Forstater, the chief of human rights charity Sex Matters, added: “It’s a disgrace that it should take the expense and personal cost of such legal action for women’s rights to simply be upheld.”
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EHRC chairwoman Mary-Ann Stephenson told Times Radio there was “potentially a degree of performativity” from councils opposing the code.
She said: “Once they talk to the legal department, they will realise that they are obliged to follow the law.”
Akua Reindorf, a barrister and former EHRC commissioner who helped draft the code, said: “It’s either performative or it’s uninformed. The law is the law, the guidance is not the law; it just tells you how to comply with the law. If they don’t want to comply with the law then they will need to change it, which means asking parliament to amend the Equality Act.”
Former EHRC chairwoman Baroness Falkner warned the law would “remain unenforced by the equalities regulator” due to its “meagre funding,” leaving women to bring cases on their own.
Alongside councils, MPs and unions are also fighting the “common-sense” Supreme Court ruling.
Labour MPs including hard-left Nadia Whittome have backed a judicial review brought by the “Good Law Project”, which claims the code amounts to a “blanket prohibition on trans-inclusive gendered services”.
NHS England declined on Wednesday to give a timetable for revising policies that let transgender patients select which ward they are treated on.
The National Union of Students has issued guidance to help students “resist” the code.
A Government spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on ongoing legal proceedings but everyone should follow the law.”
“The Government is committed to upholding single-sex spaces while also protecting the rights of trans people.
“There are clear laws in place to protect trans people from discrimination and harassment, which we continue to uphold.”
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