Transgender people should use toilets for the disabled if they don’t want to use toilets assigned to birth gender – Kemi Badenoch

UK Tories leader, Kemi Badenoch has suggested that firms should require transgender staff and customers to use disabled toilets after a Supreme Court ruling. 

The Conservative Party leader said this would be a cost-effective alternative to building new gender-neutral facilities, after the court blocked trans individuals from using toilets matching their identified gender.


Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Badenoch discussed the court’s decision, which declared that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to biological definitions. The ruling has been interpreted to mean that transgender women, who are biologically male but identify as women, can be excluded from women-only spaces like toilets and changing rooms.
 

Badenoch said the situation was “not as complex as it’s often made out to be.” When asked if transgender people should have separate toilet facilities, she explained that most organisations already have a solution. “Almost all businesses I see have disabled loos. They are unisex, different from gender neutral. Trans people can use those,” she said. “If you are providing a single-sex space, it has to be a single-sex space.”
 

She emphasized that this approach would avoid the financial burden on firms of building new facilities for transgender people.
 

Badenoch also said that the problem was not created by trans people themselves but by “predatory men who used lax rules to claim they were women and access women’s toilets.” She noted that regulations on toilets had been issued two years ago, though at the time many people had laughed at the move.
 

Meanwhile, a senior minister confirmed that trans civil servants and public sector workers will be barred from using toilets and changing rooms aligned with their identified gender. Pat McFadden stated that the Government would follow the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance, but admitted there would be no active enforcement, saying, “there isn’t going to be toilet police.”
 

The UK Supreme Court’s decision over the Easter period reaffirmed that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act mean biological woman and biological sex. The EHRC released new guidance in response, clarifying that schools must provide single-sex changing facilities for boys and girls over the age of eight. It noted that suitable alternative provisions might be necessary for trans pupils, but that trans girls should not be permitted to use girls’ facilities, and trans boys (biological girls) should not use boys’ facilities.
 

Additionally, the EHRC guidance explained that sports clubs and associations with 25 or more members can lawfully be limited to biological men or women, meaning, for example, that a lesbian women’s sports club should not admit trans women. The watchdog is developing a detailed code of practice based on the Supreme Court ruling, aiming to submit it to the Government for approval by June.

 

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