Co-op says Supreme Court ruling is “a step back”.

[MsPoppoff]

So says a statement from its female boss (my boss).
“This feels like a huge step back, and I want to reassure all our colleagues impacted by the ruling, that you have our support, that you have my personal support, and that we’re doing everything we can to explore how we can do right by our colleagues, stay true to our values…

“Our policies have not changed…. colleagues can continue to use toilets and changing facilities in accordance with their gender…”

OP, I suggest forwarding the email to EHRC.

Group legal approved her announcement that they have been ignoring H&S regulations and will continue to do so?

Aren’t the shops, for the most part, separate businesses?

I thought they used the profitable ones to cross-subsidise the unprofitable ones that fulfil a social need.

I never go there anyway as it’s so expensive (how has it kept going?) but will make a conscious effort to steer well clear in future.
Yet another business pronouncing on a legal ruling - don’t they realise how stupid they look?

Could they may be define what in their view living as a woman means? What does it involve that's not the same as what men do and doesn't vary among the individuals greatly?
The difference is the reproductive system - genitals, menstruating, gestation and lactation given by nature and biology. That's what makes a woman.
If a man "feels" like a woman than that's what a man feels so he feels like a man, not like a woman and having false thinking.
Make up and occasional dresses isn't what makes a woman as many men have worn make up and frilly stuff and dresses/skirts throughout history and in various cultures.
Shows how dangerous it is to have the woke almost always =blindingly stupid in power.

There’s rightly a lot of focus on public sector organisations and large corporations such as here, but I bet there are still loads of smaller, private businesses that have created “transitioning at work” or similar policies, that say exactly the same thing, ie use whatever you feel best for you (and fuck everyone else).

If these employers don't, after reasonable time, change these policies to make them legally compliant, surely there will be at least some employees who will feel able now to raise it, confident that they have this ruling to refer to.

In particular, I’d say that companies with a health and safety department or whatever will be very well placed to lead here. I wonder what the Coop’s health and safety leads have to say about this blatant disregard of the 1992 regulations.

“This feels like a huge step back, and I want to reassure all our colleagues impacted by the ruling, that you have our support,"

Supporting all colleagues... hmm...

Well set least now we know the co-op doesn't consider its female staff to be colleagues.
Or doesn't she realise the clarification impacts women too? If not there wouldn't have been a court case in the first place.

These clowns need to have a little think about Employer Liability Insurance and grow the fuck up.
It’s the risk of being uninsured that brought all the sporting associations into line not an outbreak of common sense.
if common sense won’t prevail, cold hard cash should do it.
Law suits will kill it in the US. Bit by bit

I suppose they can use the fees from more profitable franchises to subsidise other franchises, but those are still separate businesses.

I work in a law firm and decided to have a read of our trans policy the other week. It seems to be very much like the Co-op's (or was before the SC judgment), including paid time off for transitioning purposes and choosing the loo you want to use.

I've not read it since the judgment, but need to do so, as I'll have to raise it as an issue if it's not changed. We've had no announcements about supporting transpeople post-judgment though, so that's something!

I expect their legal advisors are of the same ilk as Stonewall’s legal advisors.

These people in CoOp are vetted in the UK.
Working in senior positions is "by permission" and in line with your quallification and an individual can be barred from the whole industry if not qualified and/or has a poor character.

Nobody gets to sit on a Board selling insurance products to a retail customer without proving they have a understanding of why controls are needed to prevent the business and staff break the law.

EG They all have a legal obligation to train staff to be whistleblowers to report other staff seen or suspected of breaking the law.

If that is a position statement issued in reply to the ruling the Regulator needs to step up and regulate the people it allow to work in the industry because "We know its unlawful but we will do it anyway" is a serious risk culture problem.

And they are in the middle of a business risk problem which is reportable to a number of Regulators
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/02/co-op-apologises-after-hackers-extract-significant-amount-of-customer-data

Debbie White
Chair
Chartered Accountant (UK),
Consulting where she worked across a number of sectors in a global capacity.
trustee of .. of Women, a UK charity

Shirine Khoury-Haq
CEO
Joined the as Chief Financial Officer
was Chief Operating Officer for the .. insurance market, which comprised of more than 50 insurance companies operating in over 200 countries. [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines & risk differs in each country ]
worked in a number of regulated sectors in the UK and overseas including retail, IT, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods.

Rachel Izzard
CFO
Rachel joined as Group CFO for Finance and Procurement.
extensive experience across a wide variety of countries.
experience in Airlines and logistics including co-founding the business range of roles overseas in Sydney, Hong Kong and New York.[< Regulated ]

Dominic Kendal-Ward
Group Secretary and General Counsel
joined as General Counsel of our insurance business. [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
qualified as a solicitor in 2006.
Prior to joining our spent 12 years at the international law firm working for a wide variety of organisations on corporate advice and transactions.

Kate Allum
Member Nominated Director
Nominations Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Remuneration Committee (Chair)
worked in commercial sector in a wide variety of companies, cultures and countries.
Chief Executive of the largest UK owned dairy co-operative.[< Regulated]

Margaret Casely-Hayford CBE
Member Nominated Director
Nominations Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Remuneration Committee
qualified lawyer of over 30 years
She is a member of the Institute of Directors’ Corporate Governance Advisory Board. [< including Regulated Industries ]

Luke Jensen
Independent Non-Executive Director
Risk & Audit Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
in the global food retail industry.
also a Non-Executive Director of NS&I (National Savings & Investments).

Moni Mannings OBE
Senior Independent Director
Nominations Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Remuneration Committee
a qualified Solicitor.
was a senior partner in international law firm
career spanning over three decades in legal practice as a Banking and Finance lawyer. International Banking and Finance Division

Adrian Marsh
Independent Non-Executive Director
Risk and Audit Committee (Chair) [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Remuneration Committee
accomplished Group Finance Director
Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants and a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Treasurers.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry
Member Nominated Director
Risk and Audit Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Nominations Committee
a Government Minister in HM Treasury, was responsible for personal savings policy and financial inclusion including Credit Unions.
a former Finance Director at GKN Aerospace, a global engineering company

Wais Shaifta
Independent Non-Executive Director
Nominations Committee . [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
Remuneration Committee
an expert in digital growth and transformation with experience in leading technology businesses. Wais was previously CEO of Push Doctor which is the largest digital partner to the NHS.
is also Senior Independent Trustee at The Football Foundation, England’s largest sports charity

Christine Tacon CBE
Member Nominated Director
Risk and Audit Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
appointed as the first Groceries Code Adjudicator, responsible for regulating the supermarket sector to ensure fair treatment for suppliers.
the Chair of the BBC Rural Affairs Committee

Lord Simon Woolley
Independent Non-Executive Director
Risk and Audit Committee [< of Regulated Industry with personal prison time and fines]
is a political and equalities activist
is currently Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge and the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Cambridge. . [< of Regulated Industry at business level ]
served as an Equality and Human Rights Commissioner,
Simon also founded internationally renowned campaigning NGO, to increase understanding of civic society, participation in Parliament and public life

I actually saw a job ad there the other day for a legal specialist in “enforcement”.

🤣

Interesting. My sister in law found the exact same thing when reading up on return from sick leave at the NHS.

@MsPoppoff
The EHRC have the power to investigate potentially unlawful practices and issue notices about how the organisation must change. Under the previous leadership, they flatly refused to exercise this power but Baroness Falkner has recently said that she encourages anyone concerned about their organisation to blow the whistle in complete confidence and the EHRC will take over from there to enforce compliance.
No court case involving you and you keep your anonymity. Worth a shot?

The ruling is a big set back for people who thought that gender identity and sex weren’t differentiated in law when it came to single sex facilities and wanted it this way.

I was anxious about the ruling and wondered what would happen should it not go in the way I wanted. Had it not, I don't think we would have seen anything like the mass expression of support and solidarity for woman. That aside, had organisations and high profile people said, don’t worry, we will do whatever is necessary to protect your privacy, dignity and safety and we will make sure you feel welcome here, I would have felt much better.

I do not begrudge trans people receiving messages of support and declarations to include them. What I do object to is positioning the way to do this is to ignore the ruling. It is possible to maintain single sex provision and to offer provision that affords people with trans identities dignity, respect and safety.

Yes … one step back from the absolutely enormous boundaries overstep they’ve done. They have about 100 metres to go…

She sounds like she’ll be collecting her P45 soon. Leaving the company exposed to litigation is not part of the job description. She’s not very bright and can’t read the room.

Just to clarify - had the SC Ruling gone the other way, it would still have clarified that trans people without a GRC are not captured under the definition of “woman” in the EA and shouldn’t be using opposite-sex facilities.

There would still have been the same uproar from transactivists that we’re seeing today, as it would have been the first time a court had explicitly clarified that trans people without a GRC should never have been using opposite-sex toilets in the first place.

Yes - I think Co-op have been working against the interests of trans people by not trying to support them within the law.

I thought that point had already been won by FWS and that the SC ruling was about those with a GRC?

Yes, that’s correct, but the SC ruling would still have been the first ruling applicable to England and Wales (in addition to Scotland) to explicitly state that trans people without a GRC were not caught by the definition of “woman” in the EA in any case.

Because of the wider application of the SC (covering England and Wales too), transactivists would still have been up in arms even if the Scottish government had won at the SC, as the SC still would have ruled that most trans people should be treated as their biological sex for the purposes of the EA.

All these businesses pronouncing on a legal ruling: just fuck off back to selling milk and bread. We’re not interested in your non-expert opinions.

What I don’t understand is that in the recent news reports it says that Co-op has 70,000 employees, how do they think they can send a message like that to 70,000 people and no one will say hang on, this isn’t right and either push back, sue them or report them? They seem to have a very cavalier attitude to the businesses money!