In April, the supreme court ruled in a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS).The landmark judgment said that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex.We look at what has happened since the ruling.The judgment has significant ramifications for who can now access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets, but most public bodies, businesses and other service providers are still waiting for an updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which will offer practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.A few companies, such as Barclays, moved quickly to bar transgender people from using toilets of their lived gender, as did Virgin Active, after a legal threat this summer.

But most are in limbo, worried about the costs and practicalities of providing extra toilets.Those that want to remain trans inclusive highlight a “minefield” of competing legal rights and staff concerns about policing toilets.After celebrating the ruling as “a victory for women’s rights”, For Women Scotland and other gender critical groups have expressed growing frustration that businesses and public services are still waiting to apply the judgment.Indeed, FWS is now suing the Scottish government again over prison policy, which states that some transgender prisoners can be housed according to their chosen gender depending on a risk assessment.Trans advocacy groups say the judgment has already precipitated an increase in individuals being challenged in toilets and elsewhere or being told to use different facilities by employers, in effect outing them to colleagues.

These groups also report a wider chilling effect as trans people avoid public places altogether.Last month, Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, wrote to the Commons’ joint committee on human rights and the women and equalities committee to express his own anxieties that the ruling could result in the “widespread exclusion of trans people from many public spaces”.The government is still considering the EHRC’s final guidance, which was submitted in September and must be approved by the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, before it is put before parliament.The commission’s outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, has urged Phillipson to approve the guidance “as soon as possible” and last week the Times reported on a copy of the document, which it said had been leaked by Whitehall figures concerned that Labour was deliberately delaying publication to avoid a potential backlash.Dozens of Labour MPs warned last month that the new regulations could cause chaos for businesses, and many backbenchers are known to have concerns about the impact on their transgender constituents.

In response to the leak, UK ministers said they would take as much time as necessary to get the new code right,They are still waiting for the EHRC to give them an assessment of likely costs to businesses: for example, of building gender neutral toilets,The EHRC says this is not needed because the costs relate to the law not the guidance,The new guidance is expected to closely reflect interim advice released by the watchdog soon after the supreme court judgment, which in effect banned transgender people from using facilities according to their lived gender,The guidance submitted to ministers was leaked to the Times and appeared to align with that advice, stating that service providers would be able to question transgender women over whether they should be using single-sex facilities “based on how they look, their behaviour or concerns raised by others”.

But that interim advice is subject to a judicial review, brought by the Good Law Project (GLP), which argues it was rushed, legally flawed and excludes trans people from accessing services they had been using for years.The GLP also argues that the commission is wrong to suggest that single-sex provision cannot be made on a trans-inclusive basis – and this is a similar argument to that put forward by Melanie Field, a former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act.Field’s recent analysis argues that, while it remains legal to exclude trans women from a service if it is proportionate, the supreme court ruling does not mean that providers of women-only services must either exclude trans women or include men.The GLP case is expected to conclude before the end of the year, with some speculation that Phillipson is awaiting the result in case it has consequences for the new code.The UK government, which intervened as an interested party in the GLP’s case, stated explicitly in its skeleton argument that the outcome was “likely to be material to, and of assistance in, the exercise of the minister’s functions in respect of the [EHRC]’s draft code”.

As well as FWS taking the Scottish government to court again over prisons policy, there are a number of other ongoing legal actions related to the substance of the April judgment.The employment tribunal brought by an NHS Fife nurse, Sandie Peggie, who objected to sharing a changing room with a trans doctor, is expected to rule before Christmas, and the judgment in a similar case brought by a group of nurses in Darlington is likely in the new year.Both are being followed closely to see how the supreme court ruling is applied in practice, and it may well serve as a template for other legal actions.Elsewhere, the UK’s first transgender judge, Victoria McCloud, is pursuing a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling, arguing that her article 6 rights to a fair trial were undermined because the judges did not hear evidence from any trans individuals or groups.