Equality Bombshell Shakes Holyrood

Scotland’s highest civil court just ruled that the Scottish National Party’s transgender prison policy is unlawful — a major win for women’s safety and biological common sense.

Story Highlights

Scotland’s Court of Session declared the Scottish Prison Service’s transgender placement policy unlawful, siding with the group For Women Scotland.
The ruling builds on the UK Supreme Court’s April 2025 decision that “sex” under the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex — not gender identity.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that allowing biological males in women’s prisons makes those prisons no longer “single sex” — and opens them to discrimination lawsuits.
The Scottish National Party had secretly pushed to change the Equality Act to keep its policy alive, even as courts moved against it.

Court Strikes Down Scotland’s Trans Prison Policy

Scotland’s Court of Session — the country’s top civil court — has declared the Scottish Prison Service’s transgender prisoner policy unlawful. The policy had allowed biological males to be housed in women’s prisons based on individual risk reviews. The women’s rights group For Women Scotland brought the legal challenge, arguing the policy directly violated the UK Supreme Court’s landmark April 2025 ruling that biological sex defines “woman” under the Equality Act 2010. ^[4]

For Women Scotland argued that Scottish ministers have a legal duty to provide female-only prison space. Their court filing stated that “provisions which refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men” — quoting the Supreme Court ruling directly. ^[7] The group had previously won that Supreme Court case, which set the legal foundation for this prison challenge. That earlier win established that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person’s legal sex for the purposes of single-sex spaces.

UK Equality Watchdog: This Policy Was “Highly Likely” Unlawful

The Equality and Human Rights Commission backed the challenge in court. A confidential version of the Commission’s code of practice — reviewed by The Times — states that access to single-sex facilities must be determined by biological criteria. The code warns that allowing biological males into women’s prisons would likely constitute unlawful sex discrimination against female prisoners. ^[2] A Commission lawyer told the court that after the Supreme Court ruling, any service mixing biological males with females “can no longer be deemed single sex.”

The Commission also raised a striking concern: if biological males who identify as women can be placed in women’s prisons, other men could demand the same access — simply by claiming a preference for what one report described as a “lovely” female facility. ^[9] The Commission suggested a practical alternative: dedicated wings or separate units for transgender inmates, rather than placing them in the general women’s population.

SNP Fought Hard to Keep the Policy — and Lost

The Scottish National Party government did not go down without a fight. Ministers argued in court that a blanket biological-sex rule would violate transgender prisoners’ rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. They also claimed the Equality Act “does not mandate sex segregation” at all. ^[1] Behind the scenes, the Telegraph reported the Scottish National Party had launched a secret push to amend the Equality Act itself — trying to rewrite the law rather than follow it. ^[5]

2/4

After the UK Supreme Court clarified that biological sex determines single-sex spaces, was this challenge ever realistically winnable?

The Scottish Government argued that prison governors should retain discretion to house prisoners according to individual circumstances,…

— Justice Log (@justicelog) June 21, 2026

Two equality watchdogs — the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission — both raised concerns during the case, not about the ruling itself, but about the lack of clarity in the Scottish government’s policy. ^[7] Legal expert Michael Foran of Oxford University was blunt: “This code and the underlying law clearly indicate that you cannot operate a women’s prison while also allowing trans women to enter.” He added that doing so would expose the prison service to multiple lawsuits from female inmates. ^[2] The court agreed. Women in Scottish prisons will now be housed separately from biological males — full stop.