My first question to someone who says the ruling was unfair/transphobic/wrong would be to ask them if they’ve actually read the judgment themselves.
The reaction to this ruling feels very similar to when the Cass review came out and people were parroting how terrible and transphobic it was without even stopping to read the document they were trashing first. All of that died down once enough people actually read it and realised it was a perfectly reasonable and measured report, as there’s nothing to point out to be outraged about.
The Supreme Court ruling goes into a ridiculous amount of detail examining each relevant provision of the EA in turn, and analyses what outcomes would arise if you interpret sex as ‘biological sex’ or as ‘certificated sex’ in each case.
No-one who actually reads it would think it was based on anything other than sensible and extremely thorough legal analysis, so the notion that it was a fudge funded by the far right makes zero sense in the context of the judgment itself, and honestly it makes the person claiming it’s a conspiracy look rather silly, IMO.
The judges also took great care to ensure trans men are interpreted as having maternity rights arising from the EA (as any other position would be unconscionable, despite that being what the Scottish government would have achieved had they won). Furthermore, the judges supported the argument that trans activists have been making for years: that there is no noticeable difference between a trans person with a GRC and one who self-IDs (especially since the GRC is a secret document no-one can demand to see).
They pointed out that since a transwoman with a GRC can still present as a man if they want and would obviously have a male-body when doing so, a situation could arise where there is no distinguishable difference between a male with a GRC stating they’re a woman and a male without one, so how could a rape crisis centre, for example, justify letting a man into a woman’s space purely because he has a GRC, while denying access to another man (or to a self-IDing transwoman) on the grounds of women’s safety and comfort? On what grounds would one man be safe for women but the others not? The only way the EA can give protection to women as a class is if it’s sex-based class, as no other definition of ‘woman’ makes logical sense in that particular context.
As PPs have said, the other key point is that the Supreme Court doesn’t make the law and can’t change it; they merely interpret the law as it stands. If people don’t like the law as it stands, then that’s where lobbying the government to change the law comes in. My main question to people on that would be “why are you parroting what Stonewall are saying about the judgment instead of holding them to account for wilfully misinterpreting the law and misleading the organisations who trusted them, when they should have been lobbying the government to change the law in the first place?”.
Stonewall consistently and openly stated that they were pushing the organisations they advised to “go further than the law” on trans rights, and they made no secret of the fact the EA didn’t actually support the policy changes they pushed organisations (including NHS, police, etc) to make. Stonewall’s overreach has been evident for years, so anyone who’s surprised that there’s a mismatch between Stonewall law and actual law was clearly only hearing what they wanted to hear from Stonewall, as even Stonewall openly admitted the two were different.