Home / The English constitution / The Equality Act
Key law
The law that consolidated Britain's anti-discrimination rules, and a frequent flashpoint in the constitutional argument.
The Equality Act 2010 brought together earlier anti-discrimination laws into a single Act. It protects people against discrimination on nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Section 149 places a Public Sector Equality Duty on public bodies, requiring them to have due regard to eliminating discrimination and advancing equality of opportunity. Critics argue the duty creates heavy compliance work and gives courts another way to second-guess decisions. Supporters argue it embeds fairness in how the state operates. The cost side of this appears on the evidence page.
In April 2025, in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the words man, woman and sex in the Act refer to biological sex, and that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person's sex for the Act's purposes. The Court stressed that transgender people keep their protection under the separate characteristic of gender reassignment. It is a clear example of a contested social question being settled in court rather than in Parliament, which is the pattern the legal constitution describes.
The court's own caveat
The justices were careful to say the ruling should not be read as a triumph of one group over another, and that the Act continues to protect transgender people from discrimination and harassment. Source: House of Commons Library.
It consolidates UK anti-discrimination law into one Act and protects people against discrimination on nine protected characteristics, in work and in the use of services.
Age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
That the words man, woman and sex in the Equality Act mean biological sex, and that a gender recognition certificate does not change a person's sex for the Act, while transgender people keep protection under gender reassignment.
