The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has withdrawn its interim advice on how organisations should act in relation to the Supreme Court’s ruling on transgender rights.

In place of the guidance, which was published in April this year, the EHRC said that institutions that are trying to interpret the court’s ruling should “take specialist legal advice”.

After the Supreme Court ruling in April around the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010, the EHRC’s swiftly published guidance that said organisations must exclude trans people from accessing gendered spaces.

The guidance is being challenged by the Good Law Project, whose executive director, Jo Maugham, said: “I’ve spent six months talking to trans people who are afraid to go out because of the climate of fear the EHRC’s interim guidance created.

“Some are suicidal – and I am aware of people who have sought to take their own lives. The EHRC has finally taken it down – and my question to them is: if the High Court finds the guidance unlawful, will you apologise to those whose lives you have so profoundly harmed?”

The Good Law Project trans rights lead, Jess O’Thomson, added: “Now the guidance has been withdrawn, so should the exclusionary policies that organisations rashly implemented in its aftermath. If not, they could find themselves in hot water.”