A new ruling from the U.K.’s highest court, following their decision last year that trans women are not women under the law, has made the already confusing legal aftermath “completely incoherent,” according to a leading trans rights organization in the country.

This week, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled on a case that challenged the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s interim code of practice in the wake of last year’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.” 

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The EHRC has been embroiled in controversy ever since, over issues like the use of bathrooms by trans people. That initial code of practice was criticized on all sides as confusing and tossed out in October. But the court addressed it in this case brought by the Good Law Project, which challenged it.

Even as the EHRC is revising guidance, the court weighed in on what was and was not permissible in their last attempt at a code of practice for employers, service providers, and others affected by the ruling.

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Justices agreed that workplaces must provide single sex bathrooms on the basis of sex assigned at birth, which would prohibit a trans employee from using a restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

But service providers — everyone from restaurants and bars to hospitals and government facilities — may allow trans customers to use restrooms matching their gender.

Service providers should be “guided by common sense and benevolence” rather than be “blinkered by unyielding ideologies” when providing bathroom facilities, The Independent quoted one justice.

The double standard has heads spinning across the pond.

“The legal situation for trans people, employers, and service providers is now completely incoherent,” a spokesperson for the Trans Solidarity Alliance said. “What bathroom a trans person can use in a pub may now depend on whether they are there as an employee or for a drink.”  

The justices additionally ruled that in an office or other workplace settings, employers may provide gender-neutral bathrooms for use by all staff, including trans employees.

But “it is unclear how trans people without access to gender neutral facilities will be able to do their jobs,” Trans Solidarity added.

Absent those facilities, trans staffers are in the awkward position of outing themselves using a bathroom that doesn’t align with their gender, while they “may have been using gendered facilities without issue for years.”

“The High Court has clarified that trans people should not be forced to use facilities in line with their birth sex, but it is hard to see how treating us as a ‘third sex’ at work aligns with the privacy protections in the Gender Recognition Act or the Human Rights Act,” the group said.

“We must be allowed to transition and move on with our lives with privacy, not be outed every day at work.”

In a passage that portends continued controversy surrounding their ruling, the court said on Friday that it was “fanciful” to suggest that the law seeks to regulate “every possibility that can arise” when providing facilities.

The notion that a person or employer was required to “police” the use of toilets “reveals the application of a ‘logic’ so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behavior.”

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