Response to the EHRC Code of practice for services, public functions and associations
The Lesbian Project have submitted a response to the EHRC’s Code of Practice for services, public functions, and associations. The scope of the guidance is discrimination in services and public functions relating to protected characteristics (which include sexual orientation). A summary of our main concerns can be found below.
The guidance fails in its stated intention of providing simple, usable guidance for service providers. There is a stark absence of constructive examples; instead, it offers a series of warnings about what not to do - the opposite of what is needed.
The guidance contains a mere two references to lesbians, compared to 80+ for trans people. The very essence of the Supreme Court judgment was to provide a coherent definition of sex in the context of the careful balance of rights which is at the heart of the Equality Act. The guidance has failed to reflect that balance.
The EHRC could begin to redress this by adding examples that are inclusive of lesbians to illustrate good practice in the sections on harassment, sport, and associations.
The legal definition of sex as biological is simple. The guidance is made needlessly unclear by including a range of other terms for sex (e.g., ‘birth sex’) which do not have legal standing. Various uses of language in the guidance render several sentences unintelligible to a lay reader - the intended audience.
You can read our full submission here
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