The UK Supreme Court (UKSC) was established in 2009 under ‘new’ Labour’s Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Its 12 judges form the final court of appeal for civil and criminal cases throughout the UK (except for criminal cases in Scotland, which has its own supreme court). It interprets and enforces the law - including judicial review of executive actions - and sets precedents which seek to ensure fairness and consistency across UK law. It is always mindful of upholding Westminster’s parliamentary sovereignty. Since the UK left the EU and the European Court of Justice in 2020, there is no higher court for the UK; the European Court of Human Rights is an international court but does not have ‘supranational’ - overriding - authority over the national law of its 46 member states, which include the UK. Recent UKSC rulings include the following:

Case study 1

In April 2025, in a case brought by the pressure group For Women Scotland against the Scottish government, the UKSC ruled that the terms ‘man,’ ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the UK Equality Act 2010 are binary and refer to biological sex at birth, not to gender identity. This decision impacts primarily on transgender people and has implications for permissions to enter single-sex spaces across the whole UK, such as public toilets, prisons, hospital wards, domestic abuse shelters, changing rooms and sporting competitions. Under the UKSC judgement, it is lawful to exclude biological males from female-only places, services, events and organisations; for example, trans girls are no longer allowed in the Girl Guides. Equally, biological females can now be barred from male-only facilities.

The UK government welcomed the ruling. The Scottish government did not, but said that it accepted the court’s judgement. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch also supported the ruling and said ‘Women are women and men are men; you cannot change your biological sex’.

The UKSC judgement stressed that transgender people are still protected from discrimination under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ in the Equality Act 2010 and described them as a ‘vulnerable and often harassed minority’ who ‘struggle against discrimination and prejudice as they seek to live their lives with dignity’.

The focus of media attention on this ruling has largely been on not allowing transgender women (i.e. biological males) into women-only spaces. This is widely seen as making women feel safer in places such as public toilets and domestic abuse shelters. However, critics of the court ruling point out that it also obliges trans women to use male public toilets, where there have been instances of them being threatened and even attacked. Equally, trans men - as biological women - are obliged to use female facilities, and they have sometimes been barred by security guards, harassed and abused. The pressure group TransActual UK has said that ‘trans men could be doubly excluded if they are not allowed in women’s spaces as trans men but not allowed in trans places as women - it is very confusing’.

Case study 2

In November 2025, in a case brought by an unnamed, non-religious family against the Northern Irish Department of Education, the UKSC ruled that the Christian-oriented religious education syllabus in Northern Irish schools was illegal because it was not ‘objective, critical and pluralistic’ and therefore amounted to attempted indoctrination. The European Convention on Human Rights and the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) stipulate that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ and that ‘the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’. The UKSC ruling should therefore mean that pupils will now be taught about other faiths as well as Christianity, as well as being able to opt out of religious education.

The family’s lawyer said that the ruling highlighted the distinction between ‘teaching pupils about a certain religion as opposed to teaching them to be a certain religion’. The Protestant churches also welcomed the ruling. However, the Ulster Unionist Party rejected the court’s suggestion of ‘indoctrination’, and the Democratic Unionist Party said it would continue to ‘defend the Christian ethos that underpins our education system and has served Northern Ireland well for generations’.

Other cases

At the time of writing, there were 33 UKSC rulings in 2025, including:

• The Court upheld the right of the Foreign Office under the Russia (Sanctions) Regulations 2019 to impose sanctions on individuals and businesses - freezing their assets - whether or not those individuals or businesses had committed any wrongdoing, and despite possible interference with their HRA rights to respect for their private and family life and to protection of their property. This affirmed the wide scope of ministerial power. https://supremecourt.uk/cases/...

• The Court upheld a ruling against estate owners on Dartmoor that the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 confers a public right to ‘wild camp’, interpreting ‘open-air recreation’ to include overnight camping. https://supremecourt.uk/cases/...

• The Court upheld the claim by an employee at the Saudi Arabian embassy of religious discrimination, under the Equality Act 2010. The embassy’s claim of state immunity was rejected because the individual’s employment was not an exercise of sovereign authority. https://www.supremecourt.uk/ca...

• The Court upheld the legality of a local authority’s standing order which said that only those councillors who had attended previous meetings on an application for planning permission could vote on the final decision. https://www.supremecourt.uk/ca...

It is fair to say that the UK Supreme Court is kept rather busy!