1 - Good Law Project v EHRC: What the High Court Actually Said

A summary of the High Court judgment handed down on 13 February 2026

This is Part One of a four part series

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Good Law Project v EHRC: What the High Court Actually Said

Today, the High Court handed down its judgment¹ in the case brought by the Good Law Project and three individual claimants against the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The case challenged the EHRC’s interim guidance on single-sex facilities, published in the wake of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling last year. The claim was dismissed on all three grounds. The EHRC’s guidance was found to be lawful.

That is the headline, and it will be widely reported as a straightforward loss for trans rights. The reality, as is so often the case with legal judgments, is far more nuanced than that.

There are things in this ruling that everyone concerned about trans people’s lives needs to understand.

What was the case about?

After the Supreme Court ruled in For Women Scotland that “woman” in the Equality Act means biological woman, the EHRC rushed out interim guidance in April 2025 about what this meant in practice, particularly for toilets, changing rooms and washing facilities. That guidance told employers and service providers that trans women should not be permitted to use women’s single-sex facilities, and trans men should not be permitted to use men’s facilities, because allowing them to do so would mean the facilities were no longer single-sex.

Three individual claimants brought the case alongside the Good Law Project. One is an intersex woman who has lived her whole life as female and was told to use the disabled toilet at work. One is a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate who was told to use the toilet corresponding to her biological sex. One is a trans man whose employer said it would be “following the guidance” and told him to use the disabled toilet instead of the men’s. These are real people, with real consequences.

What did the court decide?

The court dismissed the challenge on all three grounds. It found that the EHRC’s guidance was not unlawful, that the EHRC had not breached its statutory duties, and that the relevant legislation did not breach human rights. The Good Law Project itself was also found to lack standing, though the three individual claimants were permitted to proceed. The Good Law Project have reviewed the determination on their website.²

What the headlines will miss

This is where it gets important. The judge, Mr Justice Swift, made a number of significant observations that go well beyond a simple “the EHRC was right” conclusion. These points deserve close attention.

The law sets a floor, not a ceiling. The judge was emphatic that neither the Equality Act nor the Workplace Regulations provide a comprehensive code on who may use which facilities. The law sets out the minimum that must be provided. It does not prohibit employers or service providers from doing more. Trans-inclusive toilets are not illegal. An employer or service provider who chooses to provide them is not breaking the law, provided they also meet the minimum requirements.

Trans people must not be left without facilities. The judge confirmed that if single-sex facilities are provided, there must also be provision for trans people. Expecting trans people simply to use the facilities matching their biological sex, with no alternative, would likely fail the proportionality test required by the Equality Act. The guidance itself said this, and the court agreed.

Gender reassignment protections remain fully in force. The judge was clear that employers who comply with the Workplace Regulations by providing single-sex toilets must also comply with their obligations under Part 5 of the Equality Act not to discriminate on the ground of gender reassignment. The judge said that “the consequence will not be that a transsexual person is required to use the lavatory that corresponds to biological sex.” That is a direct quote from the judgment, and it matters enormously.

The judge criticised polarised debate. In a notable passage, Mr Justice Swift pushed back against the framing that dominates public discourse. He rejected the language of rights “trumping” other rights, describing the Equality Act as more nuanced than a zero-sum game. He said that those providing facilities “should comply with the law but also be guided by common sense and benevolence rather than allow themselves to be blinkered by unyielding ideologies.”

It is not clear that a man excluded from a trans-inclusive toilet would win a discrimination claim. One of the key claims in the EHRC’s guidance was that if you let trans women use the women’s toilet, you have to let all men use it. The judge said he was “less certain” than the EHRC about this, noting that whether different treatment amounts to less favourable treatment is a qualitative, fact-dependent question. He found a “strong argument” could be made that allowing trans women but not other men to use women’s facilities would be different but not less favourable treatment.

What does this mean in practice?

Despite the dismissal of the challenge, this judgment does not say what many will claim it says.

• It does not say that trans people must use the toilet matching their biological sex.

• It does not say that trans-inclusive facilities are unlawful.

• It does not say that employers can simply point trans people to the disabled toilet and consider the matter dealt with.

What it does say is that the EHRC’s guidance, taken as a whole and read carefully, was not an inaccurate statement of the law. It says that the proportionality requirement in the Equality Act means that any exclusion of trans people from single-sex spaces must be justified, and that simply providing no alternative is unlikely to pass that test.

There is still no updated Services Code of Practice from the EHRC. The judge noted that the Minister for Women and Equalities has yet to approve the new code, and that the existing code is out of date. That means we are still in a period of uncertainty, and the judge’s call for “common sense and benevolence” is perhaps the most important takeaway of all.

The bigger picture

The real harm here is not in the legal technicalities. It is in what happened to the three people at the centre of this case. An intersex woman who has lived her entire life as female, told she can no longer use the women’s toilet. A trans woman with a gender recognition certificate, directed to the men’s. A trans man told to use the disabled toilet. These are the human consequences of guidance that, whatever its legal accuracy, was interpreted by employers in ways that caused real distress and indignity to real people.

The court acknowledged that the EHRC’s interim guidance had a direct and ongoing impact on these individuals’ lives. Their employers changed their practices because of this guidance, and those changes remain in place today.

The judge also noted, quite pointedly, that the way the EHRC revised its guidance after publication was “opaque” and “very unsatisfactory,” and that changes should have been much more clearly flagged. That is worth remembering when we talk about trust in the body that is supposed to champion equality for everyone.

1. Judgement

2. High Court rules on lawfulness of the EHRC’s interim guidance