00:00Hello, my name's Alexander Brown and I'm the Scotsman's West Coast correspondent and I'm here
00:05outside the Supreme Court where the women in Scotland have just won their appeal over the
00:09legal definition of a woman. Delivering his verdict, Lord Hahn said the predecessors to
00:14the Equality Act used definitions of biological sex and the gender reassignment was added later
00:20as a separate protective characteristic and this is a problem essentially. He explained that including
00:25people with a gender reassignment certificate in the same sex group would make the Equality Act read
00:32in an incoherent way. He said the Scottish Government had made a mistake, you probably can see the joyous
00:37scenes behind me, there's been lots of singing. I think it's really important to note that despite
00:41the cheers and the songs outside the court and the flags, Lord Hodge also portioned against seeing this
00:46as a victory from the inside. He talked about the discrimination faced by trans people, we'll have
00:51more reaction to it as it comes, which you can read at thescotsman.com.
00:57I have to pay a huge tribute to my co-director Marion here, especially Trina,
01:12because she was the one who insisted that this was our way to clarify the law and she kept pushing
01:18up and kept fighting. And who would have thought that, you know, seven years ago, Marion set up Women's Scotland
01:29with Trina and Magdalene, who could have been here to see this today. She could have been so, so delighted.
01:39And, um, we were in a really difficult place in Scotland then. We thought we were going to see
01:47rights for women rolled back and today the judges have said what we always believe to be the case,
01:54that women are protected by their biological sex, that sex is real and that women can now feel safe,
02:03that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the Supreme
02:12Court for this ruling.
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