Work toilets - what does the Supreme Court judgement mean for these?

[Startrekobsessed]

My works toilet policy is ‘everyone has the right to use whichever toilet they feel most comfortable in’ that’s unless of course you’re a woman who doesn’t feel comfortable with a man walking around the woman’s toilets but there you go.

AIBU to ask what does the Supreme Court judgement mean for this and other workplaces toilet policies?

Hopefully as they are split by men and women now users will be required to use the toilet aligning to their sex?

My office has single sex male/female toilets on each floor and unisex toilets on the ground floor. I expect a lot of big companies will do similar.

If the toilets are designated as being for women then if a biological male uses them this discriminates against females. To avoid this they will now need to explicitly state that all company loos are unisex. It will then be up to employees to ask for or insist on single sex loos as you could argue that unisex loos will discriminate against women on the basis of sex.

This wàs just discussed a few minutes ago on Sky News press preview. They seemed to think it would mean that organisations would have to accommodate trans peoples needs. Womens toilets,0 mens toilets and extra toilets for people who identify as something else. What a nightmare. Do other countries have these problems. I doubt it.

I don’t think you could argue that unisex toilets discriminate against women on the basis of sex. Lots of places only have unisex toilets.

But if you do have unisex toilets, they are supposed to be fully enclosed with self-contained hand washing facilities. So employers shouldn’t simply be changing the door sing on existing gendered facilities.

Toilets can only be classed as unisex if they consist of a toilet and basin in a fully enclosed room.

They can't just change the sign on the mens and womens to unisex.

Many other countries I visit have unisex cubicles or rooms, toilets with handwashing. No need for anyone to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. That’s all that needed to have happened when all this blew up 3-4 years ago instead of escalating into this hate fest.

If your toilets are designated male and female then they must be segregated by sex and trans women are male. Workplace regs require that single sex toilets are provided unless they are individual floor to ceiling cubicles with sinks inside.

firstly that's a lot of building work to be done in a short space of time which isn't practical its too expensive, all schools, all hospitals....
secondly that isn't what most people want. Most people were happy with the way things were, male and female biological sex based facilities
thirdly its really not just about toilets, sport, wards, prisons, support groups, girl guides, i could go on and on about the amount of single sex places and services
fourthly that would not satisfy trans identifying men, they were never happy with unisex facilities, they would never have compromised on that they wanted access to the single sex female spaces only, they always rejected a third space as their assertion was they should get exactly the same rights and access as biological women and girls this is their validation hence why the law has had to be clarified.

When anyone first enters the building / work space - employee, contractor or visitor - ask them which toilet they would prefer to use whilst they’re on site. Then direct them accordingly. Obviously they’d need to state if they were trans at that point.
That would be straightforward!

Most restaurants I got to now just have a few , enclosed ‘rooms’ with basin, wheelchair accessible, and they are for everyone.
Much simpler.
No reason why they couldn’t also have a separate couple of urinals for men who choose to use those.

I agree with @SezFranklywhere I live we also have unisex toilets (unfortunately some places now only have unisex toilets), and people just don't care. I'd rather a man come and use the ladies as I don't see the issue as you're in a cubicle anyway, than unisex toilets which generally mean stinking piss everywhere

I'd rather a man come and use the ladies as I don't see the issue as you're in a cubicle anyway, than unisex toilets which generally mean stinking piss everywhere

And most of us would rather they didn't, and thankfully common sense has prevailed.
As well as the fact that women's toilets can also be extremely grubby, with pee on the seats, sanitary products hanging out of the bins, etc.

I work in a big office building that has male and female toilets and then 3 cupboards that have been converted into individual unisex toilets on each floor. In reality people just use the unisex ones to poo in, there are no trans members of staff that I know of.

Unisex toilets do discriminate against women of certain regions though - and religious belief is a protected characteristic.

if they already have men and women’s toilets but allow anyone to use whichever loo they want I don’t think they can just re-label them as mixed sex as they have already determined that separate facilities are needed and reasonable. They will however be expected to update their policies to ensure that ppl understand that the facilties are single sex.

Businesses and public bodies should not have amended their policies and replace ‘sex’ with ‘gender’. Too many organisations have ignored the facts that sex is a PC and not gender. Whether that was through ignorance or wilfulness is irrelevant.

Surely if it’s self contained it doesn’t matter as not in a space with another.

That would be sex discrimination as there will be more provision for males than females.

So any man can say the magic words ‘I’m trans’ and gets to use the women’s toilets if he wants, but all the women there get no say in what their preference is? Can you see anything unfair about this?

Sez it's not just about loos though is it

In my work building there are men's toilets on one floor and womens on another, both need a key to access.
Except the key is the same for both the men's and the women's toilets, and I know men do use the ladies toilets. Apparently the men's toilets are awful

Unisex, self contained cubicles with sinks are the easiest answer.

Visited Perth museum last week and they have them directly off a main corridor, not hidden inside a room behind another door and they seemed ideal.

I don;t want unisex toilets. They stink of piss. Apart from all the other considerations.

I was wondering the same thing - should I email facilities to ask whether they will be issuing a guidance about this?

Can someone explain this to me please? I'm not aware of this.

Unisex cubicles are single rooms with toilet, basin, and sink fully enclosed in a single space .

Unless you think that existing bathrooms with rows of cubicles will become unisex? In which case I agree this should not be the norm

What are those considerations, in self contained cubicles off the main thoroughfare?

(The museum loos were very clean.)