The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is about to launch a consultation on changes to its statutory Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations. While consultations are supposed to be democratic exercises, the context behind this one makes it anything but neutral. It follows the EHRC’s deeply controversial interim guidance—issued after the Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers—which reinterprets the definition of “sex” in a way that may legitimise discrimination against trans people.
Let’s be clear: this consultation is not just about trans people. It’s about how single-sex services and spaces are run, and whether people can be excluded from them on the basis of how they are perceived, not just who they are. If allowed to go unchecked, this guidance opens the door to racial profiling, the policing of gender expression, the undermining of disability rights, and the silencing of marginalised voices across the board.
Disabled people’s organisations have already raised alarm bells. The EHRC’s suggestion that trans people be forced into using accessible toilets—without considering the availability or accessibility of those spaces—doesn’t just show a stunning disregard for disabled people’s access needs. In a world where accessible toilets are already limited, such proposals pit one marginalised group against another, instead of designing services inclusively.
Likewise, racial justice organisations and gender non-conforming people of colour are acutely aware of how this kind of “gender scrutiny” tends to fall hardest on them. Policing who looks “woman enough” or “man enough” invites racist, sexist and ableist assumptions. It has always been racialised, and it will be racialised again.
And for gender non-conforming people—whether trans or not—the risks are immediate and tangible. This kind of guidance emboldens gatekeeping, surveillance, and harassment, especially in public spaces. The simple act of using a toilet or accessing a support service becomes a potential site of conflict. That’s why it’s not just trans people who need to speak up, but everyone who breaks from rigid gender norms. Your voice in this consultation matters because your right to exist without being interrogated is on the line.
This is why everyone who will be affected by the EHRC’s interpretation of the law—including trans people, cis women, the broader LGBTQ+ community, disabled communities, ethnic communities, migrants, survivors of abuse, gender non-conforming people, and more—must have a say. We need a genuinely inclusive consultation process that doesn’t rely on EHRC handpicking convenient voices, or stacking the room with anti-trans lobby groups. This isn’t a theoretical threat—cis women have already begun to face questioning and suspicion for doing nothing more than using the toilet, showing how this guidance invites broader gender policing and surveillance. If we don’t push back, anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow and outdated idea of what a woman or man “should” look like will be at risk.
This includes trade unions, psychiatric survivor and mental health service user groups, migrant rights organisations, trans-inclusive feminist and queer collectives, and others rooted in lived experience and community knowledge. These groups bring intersectional expertise that is essential to understanding the real-world consequences of this proposed guidance.
It is also absolutely vital that organisations and service providers—especially those with a public duty under the Equality Act—respond to this consultation. These changes will directly impact how you operate, who you serve, and how safely and fairly people are treated within your services. Attempts to exclude people based on sex as recorded at birth will be near impossible to police consistently, and enforcing such exclusions could lead to widespread confusion, discrimination, and legal uncertainty. Beyond the social harms, the operational and financial cost of trying to implement these policies will be enormous, diverting resources away from frontline services and creating a hostile environment for both staff and service users.
The EHRC must be held to account. This is about the future of equality law in the UK—and whether it will be wielded to protect the most marginalised or weaponised against them.
This is not just a consultation on paper. It’s a consultation about real lives, real safety, and real human rights. Don’t sit this one out. Make your voice heard. Tell the EHRC: not about us, without us.
Let’s make sure this consultation reflects the whole of society and not just those determined to divide it.