Weekly Human Rights News: 18/04/2025

This week’s human rights news includes an update on how one of our co-designed human rights tools is being shared, our submission to a parliamentary inquiry on the rule of law, and two Supreme Court judgments.

This week, a community group from our 2024 “co-design a human rights support solution” programme got in touch to let us know how they are sharing the guide we co-produced with them. The Northern Ireland Refugee and Asylum Seeker Women Association, or Bomoko NI, held an event to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2025 where they launched the pocket guide on human rights and housing for refugee and asylum seeker families.

Bomoko NI founder, Mimi Unamoyo, said:

“On behalf of Bomoko NI, I would like to extend our deepest thanks to you and all the team at BIHR for your invaluable partnership in co-producing the Pocket Guide on Housing and Human Rights for Refugees and Asylum Seekers.

The launch event, held on 8 March 2025 at Queen’s University Belfast, was met with an extremely positive response. It brought together stakeholders, community members, and advocates, all of whom engaged meaningfully with the guide and the discussions it inspired.

Feedback from attendees consistently highlighted the guide’s clarity, accessibility, and relevance, particularly in the current context of housing challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers in Northern Ireland.”

The UK Parliament’s Constitution Committee is made up of members of the House of Lords and looks at all new laws to see what implications they could have for the way the UK is run. The Committee is carrying out an inquiry into the rule of law – a principle that means the law applies to everybody equally. You can read more about the rule of law in our plain-language explainer.

We sent a response looking at the ways the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights support the rule of law. We also talked about what needs to be done to strengthen the rule of law in the UK, including public education on human rights; clarity on who has legal duties under the Human Rights Act; clear communication about human rights cases; and a strategy to make sure all public bodies are taking a human rights-based approach to decision-making.

The Committee has extended the deadline for submitting evidence to the inquiry to 22 April.

On 15 April 1989, 97 people were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough stadium. 36 years on, we re-shared a guest blog from 2016 about how the Human Rights Act played a key role in securing justice for the victims’ families. This came following the longest jury case in English legal history in which the investigative duty that supports the right to life (Article 2, HRA) allowed a full analysis of the tragic events that took place, as well as detailed conclusions about the failings of both public and private bodies.

Anna, one of the lawyers who represented the victims’ families, wrote the blog, saying:

“the families and justice demanded this level of investigation and these detailed conclusions. The Human Rights Act helped the families to make this possible.”

The Supreme Court balanced clinicians’ right to private life and parents’ right to freedom of expression in a case involving life-sustaining treatment

The Supreme Court published a judgment this week about publicly naming the clinicians involved in life-sustaining treatment court decisions about children.

One of the cases involved Zainab, who was born with a rare neurodegenerative disease and contracted swine flu when she was three, causing lung damage. She was being treated in hospital, but her parents disagreed with the doctors about the kind of care she was being given. The hospital applied to court for an order saying it would be in Zainab's best interests to stop life-sustaining treatment. However, before the court hearing, Zainab sadly passed away.

Zainab’s parents wanted to talk publicly about her care and name the doctors who were treating her, saying this was in the public interest. The hospital said this would put the doctors' right to privacy (Article 8 HRA) at risk. The Supreme Court had to balance the doctors' rights with the parents' right to freedom of expression (Article 10 HRA). Both of these rights are non-absolute, meaning they can sometimes be limited if the decision meets a 3-stage test of being lawful (a law allows that decision to be made), legitimate (which may involve protecting the rights of others), and proportionate (the least restrictive way of protecting rights having considered alternatives).

Ultimately, the Court unanimously dismissed the appeal, stating that the clinicians involved in Zainab’s care could be named due to the family’s right to freedom of expression outweighing the clinicians’ right to privacy. The judgment noted that “the treatment of patients in public hospitals is a matter of legitimate public concern”.

Read the judgment

The Supreme Court ruled on the definition of ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act

The Supreme Court heard an appeal by the campaign group For Women Scotland against the Scottish Government about how the terms woman, man and sex should be defined in the Equality Act, an anti-discrimination law applying across Britain. The Scottish Government had previously interpreted the law to include trans people who had a gender recognition certificate (GRC) in the statutory definition of sex (and for the purposes of a Scottish law to increase women’s representation on public boards). A GRC establishes a change of legal gender under the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). Section 9 of the GRA says this change to the acquired gender applies for all purposes and also that other laws can say it does not apply to those laws. In this case the question was whether a person's acquired gender on their GRC means they are this sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, or not.

All the judges at the Supreme Court decided that the terms woman, man and sex in the Equality Act refer to biological sex. This means that under the Equality Act a person with a GRC is treated as their biological sex, not the acquired gender on the GRC. The ruling makes it clear that trans people are still protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. They are also protected from sex-based discrimination where they are perceived to be a sex different to their biological one. The judges said that the statutory definitions of both sex and gender reassignment apply regardless of whether someone has a GRC.

The Court explains why this decision is important for women and trans people, and for the operation of the law. The Court said if a GRC changed the meaning of sex under the Equality Act this would create two sub-groups of people who share the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, giving one group more protections than the other. The Court highlighted there is no obvious way for organisations with duties under the Equality Act (e.g. services and employers) to distinguish between the two groups, whether someone has a GRC is private information. The Court also said its decision was important to ensure pregnancy and maternity discrimination protections are workable for women (including trans men), to not weaken sexual orientation discrimination protections including for lesbian-only spaces and associations, and to enable the operation of single and separate sex services, and sex based associations, charities, and fairness in women’s sport.

The Court discussed the role of human rights, particularly the right to private and family life in Article 8, in the Human Rights Act. The European Court of Human Rights, has said the legal recognition of gender changes is included in this right, including in the Goodwin case involving the UK. Following this the UK parliament passed the GRA to provide a system for legal recognition with GRCs.

The Supreme Court concluded that parliament had used the words “man” and “woman” to mean biological sex in law which the Equality Act is based on (Sex Discrimination Act 1975), that the GRA did not change this, and it did not change when the Equality Act was passed. 

Read the judgment