Scottish government pays nearly £400,000 to women's group after Supreme Court defeat on defining 'woman'

The Scottish government has handed almost £400,000 to For Women Scotland, the campaign group that defeated ministers at the UK Supreme Court over the legal definition of a woman. The group received a total of £392,500 — £150,000 for the Court of Session part of the case and £242,500 for the Supreme Court part.

The Scottish Government spent £766,498.80 on fighting the two judicial reviews. All of it — every pound — came from Scottish taxpayers, spent so that ministers could argue in the highest court in the land that a man with a certificate is a woman.

They lost.

Three-Quarters of a Million Pounds for the Wrong Answer

The legal dispute traces back to 2018, when the Scottish Parliament passed a bill designed to ensure gender balance on public sector boards. For Women Scotland objected that ministers had included transgender people as part of the quotas — effectively redefining "woman" by bureaucratic fiat. The issue was contested several times in the Scottish courts.

In 2022, the Court of Session ruled that the definition of sex was "not limited to biological or birth sex." That gave ministers exactly the ideological cover they wanted. The Scottish government had argued that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate are entitled to the same sex-based protections as biological women — a position that, if upheld, would have gutted single-sex spaces and rendered the word "woman" legally meaningless, as BBC reports.

For Women Scotland refused to accept it. They appealed. In April, the UK Supreme Court unanimously sided with For Women Scotland and determined that the terms "woman" and "sex" in the 2010 Equality Act refer to biological women and sex.

The ruling wasn't close. It wasn't ambiguous. And yet the Scottish government spent three-quarters of a million pounds trying to prevent it.

Slow to Pay, Slower to Learn

Conservative MSP Tess White put it plainly:

"SNP ministers have taken far too long to pay what is owed, but they should never have squandered taxpayers' cash in the first place on defending the indefensible."

She's right on both counts. It has taken the government 10 months to finally hand over cash to For Women Scotland after being defeated at the Supreme Court. A government spokesperson offered the standard bureaucratic deflection:

"There is an established process whereby parties seek to establish the final costs payable for a legal case."

An "established process." Nearly £400,000 owed to the group that proved the government wrong, and it took 10 months to write the check. The Scottish government also said it accepts the Supreme Court ruling and claimed it was "taking forward the detailed work necessary." What that detailed work looks like in practice is another story entirely.

Speaking to the Press Association, For Women Scotland director Susan Smith said she feared the delay was a "deliberate strategy." She accused the government of trying to "run us out of cash" ahead of the next round of litigation. For a government that claims to accept the ruling, the footwork tells a different story.

Accepting the Ruling — Except When It Matters

For Women Scotland says the funds will be used to cover the costs of its current judicial review on prison guidance, plus any future legal action necessary to ensure the Scottish Government complies with the law.

That's the key phrase: complies with the law. The Supreme Court already settled the question. And yet For Women Scotland is preparing to take on the Scottish Government again in 2026, with a legal challenge against the policy of allowing transgender women to be placed in the female prison estate.

Ministers have argued that having a "blanket rule" for inmates could breach human rights law. Consider what that means. The Supreme Court ruled that sex means biological sex. The Scottish government says it accepts the ruling. And yet ministers are still defending a policy that places biological men in women's prisons — because a blanket rule protecting women might violate someone else's human rights.

For Women Scotland says it is "not sure" how many trans-identified males are incarcerated in female prisons, adding that the Scottish Government had "stopped allowing the release of the numbers." When a government hides the data, the data usually tells a story officials don't want told.

This is the pattern. Accept the ruling in a press release. Undermine it in policy. Force the same campaign group back into court to make the government follow the law it already lost on. It's compliance theater — and the taxpayers keep buying the tickets.

The Bill Keeps Growing

For Women Scotland said it spent approximately £417,000 across both cases — crowdfunded, outmatched in resources, and backed by ordinary people who believed the word "woman" shouldn't be redefined by government decree. The Scottish government had the full weight of the state's legal apparatus. It still couldn't make its argument stick.

That same Scottish Parliament also passed reforms in 2022 that would have made it easier for someone to change their legally recognised sex. The UK government blocked the move, and Holyrood ministers have since shelved it. The gender recognition bill was the logical endpoint of the same ideology that drove the court case — the belief that legal categories should bend to subjective identity rather than biological reality.

It has now been revealed that SNP ministers have spent over £1 million defending the rights of biological men to access female single-sex services. They are embroiled in a court battle right now by refusing to ban trans-identified males from being housed in women's prisons, so this cost isn't even final.

What Acceptance Looks Like

When a government says it "accepts" a court ruling but immediately carves out exceptions that contradict it, the acceptance is a press strategy, not a policy change. The Scottish government accepted that a woman is defined by biological sex — then turned around and argued that biological males should still be housed in women's prisons.

As Susan Smith put it: "We're facing having to go to yet another judicial review to get the Government to implement the findings of the Supreme Court."

For Women Scotland will be back in court. The taxpayers will pay again. And the Scottish government will continue claiming it respects the law while spending public money to avoid following it.

The Supreme Court already answered the question. The Scottish government just doesn't like the answer.