The Outer House of the Court of Session has now applied the UK Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland holding to Scotland’s prisons. In Petition of For Women Scotland for Judicial Review, issued 19 June 2026 as [2026] CSOH 59, Lady Ross declared the Scottish Prison Service’s transgender custody guidance unlawful and granted declarator and reduction.

Sex segregation in Scottish prisons is lawful — and after FWS2 it means biological sex. Guidance that put some biological men in the women’s estate misstated that law.
Citizen impact: Women in custody, staff, and victims’ families get a court-backed rule that the women’s estate is a sex-segregated space under statute — not a policy preference. Trans prisoners retain Convention rights, but the judgment rejects a general right to opposite-sex accommodation. Exceptional life-threatening cases may still require individual analysis; they cannot be written into a general placement policy.

What was challenged

For Women Scotland sought judicial review of the SPS Policy for the Management of Transgender People in Custody / operational guidance (issued after a 2023 equality impact exercise; guidance dated in materials as February 2024 in the court summary). The petition argued the guidance unlawfully contemplated placing some biological men in women’s prisons. Respondents argued the petition was irrelevant absent a concrete discrimination claim, and that European Convention rights might require opposite-sex placement in some cases.

Holdings (judgment summary)

Per the Scottish Courts judgment summary (authoritative text is the published opinion PDF):

  • Sex segregation in Scottish prisons is lawful; the statutory scheme requires separate accommodation for men and women.
  • Following For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers [2025] (UKSC), that segregation is by biological sex.
  • Insofar as the Prisons Guidance allows SPS to accommodate trans prisoners in prisons for the opposite biological sex, it conflicts with that requirement and misstates the law.
  • Equal opportunities are reserved under the Scotland Act 1998; applying the guidance would be outside Scottish Ministers’ powers.
  • Article 8 rights of trans prisoners do not extend to a right to opposite-sex prison accommodation; sex segregation is justified.
  • Exceptional Article 2 (life) situations might, in an individual case, raise arguments about disapplying part of the scheme — but that cannot be determined in the abstract and cannot form part of a general policy.

The petitioner is entitled to orders for declarator and reduction. The Prisons Guidance is unlawful.

Contested: Women’s-rights groups: biological-sex estates protect women prisoners. Trans-rights advocates: risk of harm in the male estate and Convention duties. The court answered with statutory construction plus a narrow exceptional-case caveat — not with a political slogan.

How this sits with the EHRC Code

Separately, the EHRC’s updated Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations is reported as having become statutory guidance on 5 August 2026, reflecting the UKSC biological-sex reading for single-sex services. That Code is not the prisons judgment; cite each document for what it says.

Bottom line

Do not conflate this Outer House prisons decision with the April 2025 UKSC Equality Act ruling — they are sequential. Do not invent release statistics or name individual prisoners. The verified holding: SPS guidance permitting opposite-sex estate placements was unlawful as of 19 June 2026.