Should women be awarded medals if they lost to Transwomen in UK sport since 2010?

[Willandra]

Hello,

So the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Equality Act 2010 means biological women when it refers to women's sex-based protections and women's single sex spaces including women's sport.

Does that mean that sporting organisations that allowed Transwomen to compete in women's sport were breaking the Equality Act? And have been since 2010?

Do you think women who lost out to Transwomen in UK sports since 2010 should now be awarded medals they would have otherwise won? Not necessarily stripping the Trans athletes like drug cheats, but acknowledging the sporting bodies got it wrong...?

YANBU for yes, that's not unreasonable to give the women the medals.

YABU for leave sports results unchanged

Cheers (first time starting a thread! 😋)

Great idea!!!!!

No. Because sporting bodies can decide to be trans inclusive or exclusive (good article on the BBC about this) and this remains the case.

They can update their rules if they want. And people taking part in events after any rule update would be subject to those updates rules. But if the medals were awarded under the rules as they stood at the time, then they still stand.

That's simply how rules, and if you go further legislation, work.

The Supreme Court judgement has not suddenly changed the meanings of the words 'woman' and 'women' in law. It has just made it clear that they are based on biology and, more importantly, always have been.

Sports organisations that have run competitions labelled "women's events" and allowed individuals who were not women in law to participate have discriminated against women. They should recognise this, publicly.

Yes, they were cheated, they deserve the bloody medals they earned.

Not if their category was based on an incorrect definition of women, since the Supreme Court ruling applies retroactively. They were wrong. If their category is women and people who identify as women then yes. But mostly I think they’ve just redefined women, which is not on.

Don't hold your breath! The IOC's still debating whether to reallocate the medals won by victims of East Germany's state-sponsored doping program in the 1970s and 1980s.

If they do it, that would encourage the governing bodies of other sports to consider reallocations of 'trans' medals. I suspect few, if any, would be prepared to go out on a limb right now.

They should. But I bet this won't happen.

This never should have been allowed in the first place, so yes they absolutely should.

There's no requirement for rules set by sporting bodies or anyone else to use the same definition as in the Equality Act. The Supreme Court addressed this misconception in paragraph 2 of their judgment: "It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word 'woman' other than when it is used in the provisions of the [Equality Act] 2010."

There is probably precedence for doing this in examples of atheletes now known to have been drugging themselves etc.

And - I don’t think it happened.

I think there should certainly be removing any records held by male athletes in female categories.

It’s too late now, the moment has gone. Similarity to Armstrong winning the tour and then finding he’d been cheating imo

So you are saying you think that passage means that UK institutions can ignore the law, use a different definition of sex when offering single sex services and discriminate against women because they don’t want to apply the Equality Act?

You are talking nonsense. That is simply not what the Supreme Court ruling says, or means. That is not how our judicial process works either.

There are lots of areas, especially in civil legislation, where the law is open to interpretation. It is only when an upper court (not a lower court) makes a specific ruling on the understanding of what that legislation means that the understanding of law is clarified and updates made. Sporting bodies who decided - especially those who stated so - that they were trans-inclusive before this ruling did not break any rules, nor did any action they made in awarding or not awarding medals to trans athletes become void. Those are historic actions. What happens post this ruling is a matter for sporting bodies, updated guidance from the EHCR, and if people do choose the courts to decide.

It's not always that simple though.
It would work in something like a race.
But eg in tennis, which particular person who was knocked out deserves the medal. It could be the first round loser actually should have got through to the final.

But I'd agree about removing the "records". That would be easy to do.

Except his winning was purged from the record and he was sued for millions in earnings wasn’t he?

The original plan was to give his jerseys to the second place riders but it became very clear very quickly that there were a whole lot of riders who also “probably”, “maybe” or “possibly” were also performance enhanced and there was no fair way to award them.

This isn’t correct. If the rules were unlawful, and if the events were labelled as women’s events but were in fact open to males, then the whole thing was ultra vires and should not stand.

+Sporting bodies who decided - especially those who stated so - that they were trans-inclusive before this ruling did not break any rules, nor did any action they made in awarding or not awarding medals to trans athletes become void. Those are historic actions. What happens post this ruling is a matter for sporting bodies, updated guidance from the EHCR, and if people do choose the courts to decide.*

If they ran men’s events and women’s events advertised as such and included trans women as women, I think there’s a case to be answered in that women’s sports provision does fall under the Equalities Act and therefore the definition of woman applies. If they ran men’s events and an open event - ie men, women, trans people - that’s different, but that’s not what they did.

It’ll be interesting to see how Parkrun deal with the ruling.

You are correct up to a point. However I suspect that those bodies had not updated any rules, to be clear that the category was mixed sex (as opposed to for women) during this period.

How common is it? I have done an admittedly quick google search and am struggling to find who it affects. Lots of articles quote 900 but this looks to be people twisting statistics to fit their purpose. I can only find one transgender person who has actually won a medal.

whereas I can find several examples of where athletes have been accused of being transgender due to their looks/ abilities but genetic testing has proven that they are biologically female. The danger with going through previous medal winners is that you can pick on biological women just because they don’t look feminine enough and then put them through the undignified ordeal of having to prove it.

Yes they should be given the medals in a televised medal ceremony, results changed on all websites and official sporting documents

I do not think you understand how legal clarifications work. You cannot retroactively apply this ruling to past actions taken in 'legal good faith' without taking further court action and specifically referencing this case. And then, the courts decide if the action was appropriate or not, and if not if any remedy is required.

As stated - you would need to take further legal action to clarify past actions.

Would be good if the women’s park run records held by trans identifying men were also stripped, but I’m not holding my breath.

That is not what this ruling says...