A group of frightened nurses who formed their own union to defend women’s rights have won a landmark battle for a female-only changing room.
The Darlington Eight, as they are known, claimed transgender policies put them at risk, deprived them of dignity, and breached their human rights.
They launched a legal action claiming a biological male colleague – identifying as a woman called Rose – ogled at their breasts as they were changing and loitered for too long. One nurse suffered a panic attack after being asked when alone: “Are you getting changed yet?”
Their case was set for court but Health Secretary Wes Streeting has personally intervened, ordering Darlington Memorial Hospital to give the female nurses their own room.
Nurse Bethany Hutchison called his involvement “hugely appreciated [as we] restore our safety and dignity in the workplace in line with the law”.
The scandal is the latest to beset the NHS, which is Europe’s biggest employer, and has been mired in controversy of what critics claim is a decades-long lurch to embrace diversity, inclusion and equality.
The Darlington Eight sued their NHS trust last year in an action that drew praise from author and activist JK Rowling who said: “Millions of women stand with them”.
Earlier the year the Supreme Court delivered an unequivocal ruling that a woman’s gender is defined at birth. Yet despite the historic judgement campaigners said their fight for safety and protection continues.
Last week NHS bosses were forced to rip up pro-trans guidance after it was rendered illegal by the court.
The NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, has withdrawn guidance telling hospitals they should allow trans people to use their chosen lavatories and changing rooms.
After raising concerns the nurses were told they needed to get “re-educated, compromise and be more inclusive”.
They received “inadequate” support from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and their union so formed the Darlington Nursing Union.
They demanded a “fair and manageable way forward to protect safe single-sex spaces for all NHS staff in line with the equality law” while respecting the rights of those with the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” – legally known as “transexuals” – with which Mr Streeting agreed.
In April the Supreme Court ruled the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act referred only to a biological woman and to biological sex, with subsequent guidance from the equality watchdog amounting to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets and other services of the gender they identify as.
The groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling on April 15 marked the climax of a long-running legal battle which is set to have major implications for how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales.
Judges unanimously sided with campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought a case against the Scottish government arguing sex-based protections should only apply to people that are born female.
Delivering the verdict Lord Patrick Hodge said the ruling should not be seen as a triumph of one side over the other, stressing the law provides protection against discrimination to transgender people.
Gender critical campaigners hailed it as a victory for biological women with JK Rowling saying: “If some trans-identified people in the UK are currently experiencing rage and disappointment because the Supreme Court clarified that they don’t have rights they believed they had, the responsibility lies firmly with activist groups and sections of the media who’ve persistently argued, falsely, that gender transition turned a person into the opposite sex for all practical purposes in the eyes of the law.”
The Department of Health and Social Care was contacted.