What then of the Equality Act 2010? We considered whether there was any provision in that Act that might render the policy of permitting Rose to access the female changing rooms ‘lawful’. There is nothing in the Act that we could see (or that we were taken to) that confers on a transgender employee the right to use the changing facilities that accords with their declared or affirmed gender. The Equality Act 2010 protects those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment from discrimination, harassment and victimisation, in the same way that it provides such protection to those of other protected characteristics. However, that does not translate into a positive ‘right’ on the part of a trans woman to use the female changing room (or for that matter of a trans man to use the male changing room).
