For LGBT+ History Month, Michael Walker & Nadjia Zychowicz explore the legality of the Rugby Football Union’s ban on transgender women competing in female-only forms of their games
- The Rugby Football Union’s ban against transgender women playing women’s contact rugby breaches the Equality Act 2010.
- The ban is not a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting the safety and fairness of the sport.
Last summer, by a vote of 33 to 26, the English Rugby Football Union (RFU) voted for changes to its gender participation policy. These changes meant players could only participate in women’s contact rugby ‘if the sex originally recorded at birth is female’, resulting in a blanket ban against transwomen participating in the sport.
When evaluated in the context of the UK’s legislative framework for equality and human rights, this ban breaches the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010).
EqA 2010 protects people from discrimination on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) in certain spheres of society—such as at school, work and when accessing services. Under s 7,
