Hundreds of businesses and organisations have signed a letter to the UK government, saying that the guidance banning trans people from ‘single-sex’ spaces would be “unworkable” and “incompatible with modern business values”.

In April this year, the UK Supreme Court issued a ruling stating that the legal definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality Act refers exclusively to biological sex. In light of this decision, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was tasked with issuing guidance on how to apply the ruling.

Earlier this month, the EHRC handed over a final draft of the guidance to UK Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson. While the document hasn’t been made public yet, sources suggest that the guidance will tell UK schools, hospitals, leisure centres and cinemas to ban trans women from using single-sex spaces.

The news was met with public outcry, and many raised concerns over the real implications on the lives of trans people in the country. A letter signed by over 650 businesses and organisations in the UK, including Ben & Jerry’s, Lucy & Yak, and Lush Cosmetics, was sent to Minister Bridget Phillipson and Business Secretary Peter Kyle expressing concerns over the guidance.

“Any final code similar to this draft would tell organisations that we must adopt practices that are incompatible with modern business values, create unworkable operational challenges, and cause significant economic harm,” the letter reads.

It continues: “Many of us have spent years building inclusive environments where all customers and staff feel safe and welcome. These proposals would tell us to act in ways that directly contradict those commitments; undermining trust, damaging reputations, and risking the loss of valued staff and customers.”

Signatories also warned that the proposals would put businesses at “constant risk of complaints and litigation from multiple directions”, as well as forcing “business staff into the unacceptable role of ‘gender police’”.

“Such practices are not only deeply invasive, but likely impossible to implement without breaching Article 8 of The Human Rights Act, which protects rights to privacy, and risking discriminating against valued trans customers and colleagues,” the letter reads.

Commenting on the letter, Trans+ Solidarity Alliance founder Jude Guaitamacchi said: “Hundreds of businesses, large and small, have signed this letter to tell politicians to fix this mess before they are forced into conflict with their own values and have to deal with impossible operational challenges.

“The EHRC’s draft fails to respect trans people’s human rights, and would make the UK an international outlier.”

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