Sturgeon's failure to respond to gender ruling is 'insulting' (2025)

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Nicola Sturgeon’s continued failure to respond to the landmark legal ruling that trans women are not women is ‘becoming insulting’, it's been claimed.

The former first minister has been accused of being ‘missing in action’ as she remained silent, despite pushing the gender ideology that led to humiliation for SNP ministers in court.

The Scottish Tories said it was a ‘disgrace’, while the campaigners behind the historic legal decision said they doubted she had the ‘integrity or intelligence’ to admit her mistakes.

Following the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on Wednesday that ‘biological sex’ is the decisive factor in a person’s rights under UK equality law, not gender choices or certificates, Ms Sturgeon has remained silent on the issue.

The SNP Government had claimed men who identify as women should have the same rights as biological women, but the Court comprehensively rejected that argument.

It said sex was ‘binary’ and a person was ‘either a woman or a man’.

The ruling means male-born trans women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces such as rape crisis centres and changing rooms if ‘proportionate’.

The case was brought by For Women Scotland (FWS) over a 2018 Holyrood law passed under Ms Sturgeon. The action was resisted by Ms Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf and John Swinney.

Mr Swinney accepted the ruling, but refused to apologise for fighting FWS all the way to the UK’s highest court.

Despite her central role, Ms Sturgeon has yet to give any public response to the court defeat.

Tory equalities spokeswoman Tess White said: ‘It’s a disgrace that Nicola Sturgeon - the architect of the SNP’s reckless gender reforms - has stayed silent after this week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling.

‘She’s usually first in line for the cameras when there’s a positive headline to chase or a book to plug. Now, when women and girls deserve answers, she’s missing in action.

‘Her silence is becoming insulting. Nicola Sturgeon should apologise for the damage her divisive gender self-ID policy has caused.’

FWS co-director Susan Smith said: ‘Frankly, we are not surprised that the woman who caused such turmoil has gone into hiding. We very much doubt that Sturgeon has the integrity or intelligence to own up to her appalling mistakes.

‘She made the lives of many of the most vulnerable women in Scotland intolerable: women in prison who remain incarcerated with violent men, women scared to access rape crisis centres, and women called bigots because they wanted female medics to provide intimate care.

‘Sturgeon painted a target on the backs of women like ourselves when she said that our views were not valid, she allowed the most deranged, angry young men in her party to hound her own MPs and MSPs, and she smeared and demonised feminist campaigns as “transphobic... deeply misogynist, often homophobic, possibly some of them racist”.

‘Had she and her ministers listened to us, they would have been spared this humiliating ruling. She wasted time, money, and political capital on her monomaniacal campaign and she owes the women of Scotland an apology.’

Alba MSP Ash Regan, who resigned as an SNP minister rather than back the SNP’s gender reforms before defecting, said Ms Sturgeon was showing her ‘true colours’.

She said: ‘The former first minister said that the concerns of women were “not valid”. She gambled the good will of the independence movement on her discredited gender ideology and lost.

‘Women’s concerns were valid and many will be insulted that the person who had so much to say previously now has nothing to say about the ruling.

‘Nicola Sturgeon is now showing her true colours as she will soon depart on her book tour while those of us that care about the safety, dignity and privacy of women and girls will be cleaning up the mess she has left behind.’

The row came as the Scottish Government confirmed it was seeking an ‘urgent meeting’ with the UK Government ‘to discuss implications of the judgment’.

Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville plans to make a statement to MSPs at Holyrood on Wednesday.

The SNP and Ms Sturgeon’s spokeswoman have been asked for comment.

Nicola Sturgeon

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