This is a very tough day for trans people – with a long legal road ahead to right this wrong | Robin Moira White

The supreme court judgment is contradictory and confused. And there seems no prospect of the Labour government sorting this out

• Robin Moira White is joint author of A Practical Guide to Transgender Law

A person has to be tough to be transgender. Given the problems that can be associated with coming out to family, friends and work colleagues, the constant vilification of trans people by certain parts of the media and on social media and the internal emotional turmoil transition entails, it requires mental strength beyond the ordinary. I should know - I have walked that path.

Yesterday, transgender people were dealt a blow from a source I would not have predicted when I transitioned 13 years ago - the UK supreme court. In a case concerning representation on the boards of public bodies in Scotland, the supreme court ruled that in the 2010 Equality Act (EA), sex" should be taken to be biological sex", in the sense of the sex recorded on a citizen's original birth certificate, and does not include certified sex" where a transgender person has obtained a gender recognition certificate (GRC) by the process set out in the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. This renders a GRC valueless for the purposes of the Equality Act.