The High Court has dismissed a legal challenge brought by campaign group Sex Matters against police guidance that allows transgender suspects to request a strip search by an officer of the opposite biological sex, provided both parties genuinely consent, with the group now seeking to appeal.
Transgender suspects will continue to be able to request a strip search by an officer of a different biological sex, after the High Court rejected a legal challenge to police guidance permitting the practice. Mr Justice Linden ruled on Friday that the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and British Transport Police (BTP) had acted lawfully in issuing the interim guidance, provided that both the officer and the detainee freely consent. The case had been brought by the campaign group Sex Matters, which argued the policy placed female officers under improper pressure to search detainees who are biologically male but identify as women.
How the dispute arose
The guidance at the centre of the case was issued following the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling on the legal definition of biological sex and its implications for police procedures. In response to that ruling, strip-search guidance was amended to prevent biological male officers from carrying out intimate searches of women. However, the NPCC, which produces guidance used across all police forces, said it would continue to allow biological male suspects who identify as women to request that a strip search be carried out by a female officer instead. Sex Matters argued this exposed female officers to pressure they should not have to face, and brought a legal challenge over the guidance.
The dispute turned on the interpretation of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), which includes a provision stating that officers should generally only strip-search people of the same sex. Sex Matters argued that this provision amounted to a statutory duty that police forces could not sidestep by introducing a consent-based system of their own.
What the court decided
In his ruling, Mr Justice Linden found that PACE does not prevent a cross-sex strip search from taking place where both the detainee and the officer freely and genuinely consent, provided all other legal requirements are satisfied. He stressed that any such consent must be voluntary, and that an officer is free to refuse or withdraw their consent at any point, meaning no officer can ever be compelled to carry out a search they do not wish to perform. The judge noted that, where an officer does not consent, an officer of the detainee’s biological sex would ordinarily carry out the search instead, adding that in practice, “an officer of the same sex will carry out the search” in such circumstances.
The judgment does not require female officers to search biological males, or male officers to search biological females; rather, it confirms that a cross-sex search is only lawful where both parties agree to it voluntarily. Addressing why consent was central to the guidance, the judge said the requirement was designed to “mitigate the distress which the detained transgender person may feel, rather than to increase it.” The ruling applies specifically to the interpretation of police guidance in England and Wales and does not automatically extend to operational policy elsewhere in the UK.
The case for Sex Matters
Representing Sex Matters, Tim Owen KC argued in written submissions that the guidance breached PACE, telling the court it had “enacted a same-sex guarantee which amounts to a statutory duty.” He argued that Parliament had deliberately built a same-sex guarantee into the legislation governing strip searches, and that police guidance could not lawfully override this through a consent-based arrangement of the force’s own making. Owen further argued that the NPCC and BTP had “failed to properly consider the impact on female police officers and female detainees” in introducing what he characterised as a consensual opposite-sex searching regime. The legal challenge did not seek damages, but asked the court to declare the guidance unlawful and require police forces to revise their procedures.
The case for the NPCC and BTP
Fiona Barton KC, representing the NPCC and BTP, told the court in written submissions that strip searches carry an inherent risk of distress regardless of the circumstances, noting that even with every precaution taken, such searches have “the potential to be demeaning, embarrassing and distressing.” She argued that this risk could be heightened where a detainee is searched by an officer of a different gender identity, even where both individuals share the same biological sex, and pointed to scenarios such as a male officer being required to search a trans woman with surgically altered anatomy, or the reverse situation. Barton said the guidance was designed to address these “particularly acute issues” by permitting cross-sex strip searches only where both the detainee and the officer freely and fully consent. Lawyers for the NPCC and BTP maintained that, in some circumstances, allowing consensual cross-sex searches can reduce distress for transgender detainees, particularly where their gender identity differs from their physical anatomy.
Reaction to the ruling
Sex Matters chief executive Maya Forstater said the organisation was “extremely disappointed” by the decision and confirmed the group intends to seek permission to appeal. She said the case was fundamentally about upholding the law, stating: “Our case seeks to protect the rule of law.” Forstater argued that if Parliament had intended to allow detainees to request a strip search by an officer of the opposite sex, it would have written that provision into PACE itself, and that it was not for the NPCC or individual police forces to introduce what she described as a parallel system of their own. With Sex Matters now pursuing an appeal, the legal dispute looks set to continue, as part of a wider ongoing national debate over how biological sex, gender identity and workplace rights intersect within policing procedures.
