Good Law Project v Equality and Human Rights Commission [2026] EWHC 279 (Admin)

The Good Law Project and three individuals challenged EHRC guidance issued after For Women Scotland concerning single-sex facilities. The High Court held the guidance was lawful, the Good Law Project lacked standing, and no Convention rights were breached. The claim was dismissed.

Facts

Following the Supreme Court’s judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers [2025] 2 WLR 879, which held that ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (‘EHRC’) published an ‘Interim Update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment’ on 25 April 2025. The Interim Update, issued under section 13(1)(d) of the Equality Act 2006, addressed single-sex facilities in workplaces and services open to the public. A revised version was published on 24 June 2025, and the document was removed from the EHRC’s website on 15 October 2025.

The Good Law Project and three anonymised individual claimants (BOT, an intersex person; BNW, a trans woman with a GRC; and BBS, a trans man whose GRC application was pending) challenged the guidance. Each individual claimant had been instructed by their employer, in reliance on the Interim Update, to cease using lavatories corresponding to their lived gender.

Issues

The court considered three grounds:

1. Whether the guidance in the Interim Update was an unlawful exercise of the section 13(1)(d) power because it misstated the law.
2. Whether publication breached the EHRC’s obligations under sections 3, 8 and 9 of the Equality Act 2006.
3. Whether, if the guidance correctly stated the law, the requirements were incompatible with Convention rights (particularly Article 8, alone or with Article 14).

Preliminary issues were also raised regarding whether the challenge had become academic and whether the Good Law Project had standing.

Arguments

Claimants

The claimants argued that the guidance was wrong in law in its treatment of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, contending that regulation 20 requires only the provision of facilities and does not prescribe how they are used. They submitted that ‘men’ and ‘women’ in the 1992 Regulations should be read consistently with section 9(1) of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, relying on Croft v Royal Mail Group Plc [2003] ICR 1425. They further argued the guidance was unbalanced, omitted protective aspects of For Women Scotland, and interfered with Article 8 rights.

Defendant

The EHRC contended the challenge was academic following removal of the Interim Update, that the Good Law Project lacked standing, and that the guidance accurately stated the law.

Judgment

Preliminary issues

Swift J held the challenge was not academic because the individual claimants’ employers had implemented arrangements in reliance on the Interim Update which remained in force. However, the Good Law Project lacked standing under section 31(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, since it was not directly affected and individual claimants directly affected were already before the court.

Ground 1

The court held that section 13(1)(d) EA 2006, read with sections 3, 8 and 9, required any guidance to be an accurate statement of the law without misstatement or material omission, equivalent to principle (ii) in R(A) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] 1 WLR 3931.

Examining each element of the guidance, the court concluded it was substantially accurate. Regulation 20 of the 1992 Regulations requires that male and female lavatories be used by biological men and women respectively; the claimants’ ‘trans-inclusive lavatory’ reading placed form over substance and contradicted the regulation’s purpose of providing private space for each sex for reasons of decency and propriety. Section 9(3) of the GRA 2004 displaced section 9(1) in relation to the 1992 Regulations, given the reference to ‘pregnant women’ in regulation 25(4), the impact on paragraph 2 of Schedule 22 to the EA 2010, and the propriety considerations analogous to those discussed at paragraph 224 of For Women Scotland. The reasoning of Pill LJ in Croft could not survive For Women Scotland.

Whether excluding biological males (other than trans women) from a trans-inclusive female lavatory would amount to less favourable treatment was a fact-dependent question, applying the qualitative analysis from Smith v Safeway plc [1996] ICR 868 and R(Al Hijrah School) v HM Chief Inspector of Education [2018] 1 WLR 1471. The court accepted some force in the criticism that paragraphs [1] and [3e] of the April version ought to have been presented together (as occurred in the June revision), but the original was not, taken in the round, inaccurate.

Ground 2

The general duties in sections 3, 8 and 9 EA 2006 afford the EHRC latitude. The decision to publish, the revisions, and the subsequent removal did not breach these provisions, although the court observed that the way revisions were silently incorporated while retaining the original publication date was ‘opaque’ and ‘very unsatisfactory’.

Ground 3

Assuming Article 8 was engaged, any interference arising from restrictions on trans-inclusive lavatories would be capable of justification on the facts, taking into account the rights of others. The Strasbourg authorities relied upon (Goodwin, AP v France, TH v Czech Republic) concerned civil status recognition, a materially different issue.

Implications

The judgment confirms that the EHRC’s power under section 13(1)(d) EA 2006 to give advice or guidance carries an obligation to state the law accurately, without misstatement or material omission, but does not require a comprehensive or exhaustive statement. The court recognised that guidance may rest on generic factual assumptions and should not be struck down where those assumptions are permissible.

Substantively, the decision endorses the view that regulation 20 of the 1992 Workplace Regulations requires single-sex lavatory provision according to biological sex, with section 9(3) of the GRA 2004 displacing section 9(1) in that context. This extends the reasoning in For Women Scotland beyond the EA 2010 to workplace health and safety legislation. However, the court emphasised that employers remain bound by obligations under Part 5 of the EA 2010 not to discriminate on grounds of gender reassignment, so compliance with regulation 20 does not of itself permit a requirement that transsexual employees use lavatories corresponding to biological sex without further consideration of proportionality.

The court cautioned against overstating the reach of the legislation, observing that neither the EA 2010 nor the 1992 Regulations provides a comprehensive code regulating every aspect of facility use, and that both set a ‘floor’ rather than a ‘ceiling’. The decision is likely to be of significance to employers, service providers, transsexual individuals, and equality bodies, particularly pending publication of the revised Services Code of Practice. The judgment also reinforces that representative organisations such as the Good Law Project will not readily be accorded standing where directly affected individuals are available to bring proceedings.

Verdict: The application for judicial review was dismissed. Permission was refused to the Good Law Project for want of standing; permission was granted to the three individual claimants, but each of the three grounds of challenge failed.

Source: Good Law Project v Equality and Human Rights Commission [2026] EWHC 279 (Admin)