Akua Reindorf, a commissioner for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, in the Times:
Criticising a Supreme Court judgment is not a novel activity, and citizens should be involved in debate about law reform. But lawyers, politicians and journalists must be mindful that their voices carry weight. It is irresponsible to make ill-informed or lazy challenges to the carefully reasoned decision of the country’s most exceptional legal brains.
The Supreme Court has decided what parliament intended by following established rules of statutory interpretation, which are explained in the judgment. What civil servants or politicians think they remember about what was said or intended during the drafting and passage of the Equality Act is entirely irrelevant to this exercise.
But of course that hasn't stopped the partisan takes.
Undermining the legitimacy of the judgment on such misconceived grounds helps nobody, and is all the more regrettable against the backdrop of misinformation that has been disseminated about the law relating to sex and gender from ostensibly trustworthy sources over many years.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is working at pace to produce clear, authoritative guidance. Employers, service providers, sporting bodies and other duty-bearers under the Equality Act should urgently review their policies and practices, using reliable specialist advice that does not emanate solely from interested lobby groups. What is needed is constructive dialogue about how the law can work for everybody, based on a shared and accurate understanding of the law as it is, rather than the law as activists would prefer it to be.
In other words – this is the law: deal with it.
Mick Hartley 