I’m curious as to whether this is legit and if so what the rationale might be.
So best as I can figure from this, the policy of having a pensionable age that varies by gender, under which men have to wait 5 years longer to become eligible, is not “direct discrimination based on sex” and is A-OK. But treating this transgender person as a man instead of a woman is “direct discrimination based on sex”. Hard to figure, if this is for real.
It seems more of a process problem based on your quote - had they annulled the marriage so that she could get the ‘certificate’, then she would be eligible now.
Why she had to annul the marriage, etc in order to get the certificate is a bigger question, IMHO.
The UK recognizes same-sex marriages, doesn’t it? So yeah, you’d think that you could go through all of the sex-change paperwork while still married.
And I’m also puzzled by the pension age varying with gender.
IANAL nor British, but what I understand is “the policy itself is discriminatory, something which hadn’t been brought up to the attention of the Court before this particular case.”
Assuming that my understanding is correct, if someone had gone to court with a case complaining about women’s pensioning age being earlier, that would have led to the same conclusion of “this is gender-based discrimination”. Which it sure looks like!
That doesn’t appear to be correct. Here’s another take on it.
So the ruling appears to be transgender-specific and does not say “regardless of whether this person is legally male or female they should get the same pension eligibility”. The court seemed fine with each gender getting a separate “age provided for persons of [that] sex”. The sex discrimination is specific to treating transgender people as being their birth sex.
What’s weird about all this is that you would think this is glaring enough that articles on the story would address it. But I’ve not seen that.
The transgender thing isn’t an issue for me and it wouldn’t be an issue in this case if we changed the stupid rule about pension age differing by gender. It should be the same for everyone.
Or you could argue that it shoud be higher for women, since they live longer.
The UK actually appears to be in the process of equalizing the eligibility age for men and women, if my reading of some recent articles is correct.
As near as I can tell, the earlier payout for women in past years reflected an understanding that women were more likely to be forced out of the working world earlier, what with child-rearing and other sexist expectations, and more likely to be left destitute if their spouses died early.
Which you’ll be glad to know is well underway! Very roughly speaking, the state pension age for women has been increasing by one month for every two months elapsed since 2010. It’s not been a straightforward process though, the original system was pretty much designed around the “man as sole bread-winner” model, and there’s been loads of women fallen through various safety-nets.
My wife went through most of her working life expecting to retire and draw her state pension at 60, which would have been in 2017. She now has to wait until 2021.
The retirement age for men is also going up; by 2028 everyone will have to wait until they are 67. No doubt that will be raised further in the future. A young person starting out now should probably expect to keep working until they are 70.