A Scottish minister has said school children do not feel safe after single-sex toilet guidance was changed following the Supreme Court ruling.
Kaukab Stewart, the equalities minister for the Scottish Government and a prominent SNP election candidate, was asked to address the new guidance during an LGBTQIA+ hustings that children’s human rights were being breached because they “do not feel safe”.
The Herald was told it could not report or attend the event, organised by government-funded charities Equality Network, Scottish Trans and LGBT Youth Scotland, and we were initially asked to leave.
In September last year, the Scottish Government updated its guidance to ensure schools provide separate toilets for boys and girls, based on biological sex.
Ministers then went to court to defend its prison policy, which states that transgender prisoners who were born male could be placed in the female state depending on risk assessments.
It follows the Supreme Court judgment in April 2025, brought by For Women Scotland, which clarified that sex under the Equality Act 2010 referred to biological sex.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – the UK’s equalities watchdog – submitted new guidance, stating facilities had to be single-sex, to the UK Government for approval in September, but it remains unsigned.
During the hustings, Ms Stewart claimed the “enforcement” of the Supreme Court judgment rested with the watchdog, but she said that guidance hadn’t yet been produced.
“The SNP accepts the Supreme Court judgment and has worked at pace to look at all the policies and the guidance that requires to be changed, and has made progress on that, including the guidance on the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act, which is what originally the judgment was based on.
“However, the Supreme Court judgment, it is not a licence for division and hostility and the pursuit of equality for women, trans, non-binary people, that remains a collective responsibility.”
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She added: “I think we need to proceed very carefully, although just a reminder that the enforcement of it does lie with the EHRC. They haven’t yet come up with their guidance yet but that hasn’t stopped us from proceeding and doing that, including guidance on supporting transgender young people in schools as well.”
However, The Herald has seen meeting notes between Ms Stewart and the EHRC chair Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson in January, where the government was explicitly told it did not have to wait for the publication of guidance to act on the judgment.
The implications of the judgment on transgender individuals were also discussed, with politicians asked about the barriers for LGBT youth accessing facilities that aligned with their chosen gender.
Ms Stewart said: “No child in school should not be going to the toilet. I’ve been hearing from young people who are not eating, who are not drinking, because they don’t feel safe in accessing a facility which is actually just a basic human right.
“It’s actually nothing special to be able to just go to a toilet. It’s not rocket science.”
Scottish Greens candidate Maggie Chapman said too many LGBT children “feel unsafe at school”.
“They shouldn’t feel like they are being forced to make themselves ill by not going to the toilet at school because they don’t feel safe,” she said.
“They shouldn’t feel like they need to self-exclude from school because they don’t feel safe.”
Ms Chapman said policymakers should not “retreat” from inclusion following the Supreme Court ruling.
She said: “Trans people have had their lives made less safe as a consequence of what happened in April last year and we cannot ignore it. It will be a dereliction of duty if we ignore that.”
“What we have seen in the last year is not just some legal clarity,” she said. “Some trans people are no longer with us as a direct consequence of this decision taken last April,” she added.
“When the law is not clear, we must choose expansive inclusion wherever possible.”
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Caron Lindsay, a Liberal Democrats candidate, told the hustings that “too many trans children were being let down” in schools across the country following the judgment.
“It’s been a horrible, horrible, horrible year and I’ve seen the impact on the trans people I love who have been really settled and then all of a sudden, this has been such a blow and we just can’t have that,” she said.
Ms Lindsay described the EHRC’s draft guidance as “just awful”, adding trans people could be turned away from bathrooms, hospitals or cinemas for “not looking female enough”.
The draft guidance, she said, “risks putting trans, non-binary women, and all women and girls in really safe and humiliating situations and that’s not something we can stand for”.
She also said she hoped the legal landscape would change in years to come.
Labour’s Paul O’Kane said it was “very difficult” for many groups in Scotland, but said he respected the Supreme Court ruling.
Equalities Secretary Bridget Philipson, he said, has to juggle the nuances to get the balance right for women and for transgender people.
“But I’m not going to pretend that it hasn’t been a very, very difficult time for people who feel their rights are under threat,” he said.
“I’m not going to pretend that it hasn’t been difficult to get the balance in terms of interpreting what the judgment says and I’m also not going to say that we should just cast that judgment aside and view it as something that was politically motivated or was about the agenda of the Supreme Court. I do not think it was. They were making a judgment based on their interpretation and definitions with the Equality Act.”
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