Two major law firms asked separate judges Wednesday to permanently block President Donald Trump’s executive orders that were meant to punish them and harm their business operations.

The firms — Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — say the orders are unconstitutional assaults on the legal profession threaten their relationships with clients and retaliate against them based on their past legal representations or their association with particular attorneys whom Trump perceives as his adversaries.

Courts last month temporarily halted enforcement of key provisions of both orders, but the firms asked in court Wednesday for the edicts to be struck down in their entirety and for judges to issue rulings in their favor. Another firm, Jenner & Block, is scheduled to make similar arguments next week and a fourth, Susman Godfrey, is set to make its case next month.

“The entire executive order is retaliatory,” Dane Butswinkas, a lawyer who presented arguments on behalf of Perkins Coie, told a judge.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell did not immediately rule on the firm’s request, but she repeatedly expressed deep unease over the executive order, signaling that she was inclined to side with Perkins Coie.

She grilled a Justice Department lawyer over the government’s plans to suspend the security clearances of lawyers at the firm and asked him to respond to the suggestion that the blacklisting of disfavored law firms was similar to the “Red Scare” panic over communism decades ago. And she pressed him to explain why the Trump administration was forcing firms to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in their hiring practices.

The spate of executive orders taking aim at some of the country’s most elite and prominent law firms are part of a wide-ranging retribution campaign by Trump designed to reshape civil society and extract concessions from powerful institutions. The actions have forced targeted entities, whether law firms or universities, to decide whether to push back and risk further incurring the administration’s ire or to agree to concessions in hopes of averting sanctions. Some firms have challenged the orders in court, but others have proactively reached settlements.

The executive actions have generally imposed the same sanctions against the law firms, including ordering that security clearances of attorneys be suspended, that federal contracts be terminated and that lawyers be barred from accessing federal buildings.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Minnesota asking to revive the state’s ban on gun-carry permits for young adults.

The justices also left in place a ban on guns at the University of Michigan, declining to hear an appeal from a man who argued he has a right to be armed on campus. No justice noted a dissent in either case.

Taken together, the actions reflect the high court’s apparent lack of appetite for cases that further explore the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”

The court has repeatedly turned away gun cases since its 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights and a clarifying 2024 decision that upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.

The decision not to hear the Minnesota case was somewhat surprising because both sides sought the Supreme Court’s review and courts around the country have come to different conclusions about whether states can limit the gun rights of people aged 18 to 20 without violating the Constitution.

The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that the Minnesota ban conflicted with the Second Amendment, which the court noted sets no age limit and generally protects ordinary, law-abiding young adults.

In January, the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns.

In February, a federal judge declined to block Hawaii’s ban on gun possession for people under 21.

A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to “sanctuary” jurisdictions, saying that portions of President Donald Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction sought by San Francisco and more than a dozen other municipalities that limit cooperation with federal immigration efforts.

Orrick wrote that defendants are prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds” and the administration must provide written notice of his order to all federal departments and agencies by Monday.

One executive order issued by Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to withhold federal money to sanctuary jurisdictions. The second order directs every federal agency to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.”

At a hearing Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers argued that it was much too early for the judge to grant an injunction when the government had not taken any action to withhold specific amounts or to lay out conditions on specific grants.

But Orrick, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, said this was essentially what government lawyers argued during Trump’s first term when the Republican issued a similar order.

“Their well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017,” Orrick wrote, citing the executive orders as well as directives from Bondi, other federal agencies and Justice Department lawsuits filed against Chicago and New York.

San Francisco successfully challenged the 2017 Trump order and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that the president exceeded his authority when he signed an executive order threatening to cut funding for “sanctuary cities.”

There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding that person until federal officers take custody.

Leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions say their communities are safer because immigrants feel they can communicate with local police without fear of deportation. It is also a way for municipalities to focus their dollars on crime locally, they say.

Besides San Francisco and Santa Clara County, which includes a third plaintiff, the city of San José, there are 13 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which include Seattle and King County, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Nadine Menendez, the wife of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, was convicted Monday of teaming up with her husband to accept bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car from three New Jersey men looking for help with their business dealings or legal troubles.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts in the same federal courthouse in Manhattan where a different jury convicted Bob Menendez of many of the same charges last year. The Democrat is supposed to begin serving an 11-year prison term in June.

Nadine Menendez, who stood but did not appear to react as the verdict was delivered by the jury foreperson, was scheduled to be sentenced on June 12, six days after her husband is expected to report to prison.

Outside the courthouse, she wore a pink mask as she stood next to her lawyer, Barry Coburn, said he was “devastated by the verdict.”

“We fought hard and it hurts,” he said. “This is a very rough day for us.”

The evidence shown to jurors over a three-week trial followed the timeline of the whirlwind romance between the couple that began in early 2018 and continued after criminal charges were brought against them in September 2023. Repeatedly during the trial, prosecutors said they were “partners in crime.”

During a 2022 raid on the couple’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home, FBI agents found nearly $150,000 worth of gold bars and $480,000 in cash stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible, also an alleged bribe.

Both Nadine and Bob Menendez said they are innocent and never took bribes.

Initially, they were to be tried together, along with the three businessmen, but Nadine Menendez’s trial was postponed a year ago after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery.

Bob Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate last August following his conviction. Before the charges were brought he had been chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Prosecutors accused Nadine Menendez of starting to facilitating bribes to the senator around the time that they began dating, before they married in the fall of 2020.

At the time, she was in danger of losing her home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, after missing nearly $20,000 in mortgage payments, trial testimony showed. A longtime friend, Wael Hana, provided cash to save the home — and prosecutors said that in return, the senator began helping Hana preserve a business monopoly he had arranged with the Egyptian government to certify that imported meat met religious requirements.

Nadine Menendez also needed a new car after her old one was destroyed when she struck and killed a man crossing a street. (She did not face charges in the crash). Prosecutors said a businessman, Jose Uribe, gave her a Mercedes-Benz, and in return Bob Menendez used his clout to pressure the New Jersey attorney general’s office to stop investigating some of Uribe’s associates.

Prosecutor said more cash and gold bribes were paid to the couple by Fred Daibes, a prominent real estate developer who prosecutors said wanted the senator to protect him from a criminal case he was facing in New Jersey. Prosecutors said Bob Menendez also helped Daibes secure a $95 million investment from a Qatari investment fund.

The U.S. and global economies will likely slow significantly in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty they have created, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

The IMF said that the global economy will grow just 2.8% this year, down from its forecast in January of 3.3%, according to its latest World Economic Outlook. And in 2026, global growth will be 3%, the fund predicts, also below its previous 3.3% estimate.

And the Fund sees the world’s two largest economies, China and the United States, weakening: U.S. economic growth will come in at just 1.8% this year, down sharply from its previous forecast of 2.7% and a full percentage point below its 2024 expansion. The IMF doesn’t expect a U.S. recession, though it has raised its odds of one this year from 25% to about 40%.

China is now projected to expand 4% this year and next, down roughly half a point from its previous forecasts. “We are entering a new era,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, said. “This global economic system that has operated for the last eighty years is being reset.”

The forecasts underscore the widespread impact of both the tariffs and the uncertainty they have created. Every country in the world is affected, the IMF said, by hikes in US import taxes that have now lifted average U.S. duties to about 25%, the highest in a century.

The forecasts are largely in line with many private-sector economists’ expectations, though some do fear a recession is increasingly likely. Economists at JPMorgan say the chances of a U.S. recession are now 60%. The Federal Reserve has also forecast that growth will weaken this year, to 1.7%.

The IMF is a 191-nation lending organization that works to promote economic growth and financial stability and to reduce global poverty.

Gourinchas said that the heightened uncertainty around the import taxes led the IMF to take the unusual step of preparing several different scenarios for future growth. Its forecasts were finalized April 4, after the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs on nearly 60 countries along with nearly-universal 10% duties.

Those duties were paused April 9 for 90 days. Gourinchas said the pause didn’t substantially change the IMF’s forecasts because the U.S. and China have imposed such steep tariffs on each other since then.

The Trump administration has slapped duties on cars, steel, and aluminum, as well as 25% import taxes on most goods from Canada and Mexico. The White House has also imposed 10% tariffs on nearly all imports, and a huge 145% duty on goods from China, though smartphone and computers have been exempted. China has retaliated with 125% duties on US goods.

The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a key preventive-care provision of the Affordable Care Act in a case heard Monday.

Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberals, appeared skeptical of arguments that Obamacare’s process for deciding which services must be fully covered by private insurance is unconstitutional.

The case could have big ramifications for the law’s preventive care coverage requirements for an estimated 150 million Americans. Medications and services that could be affected include statins to prevent heart disease, lung cancer screenings, HIV-prevention drugs and medication to lower the chance of breast cancer for high-risk women.

The plaintiffs argued that requirements to cover those medications and services are unconstitutional because a volunteer board of medical experts that recommended them should have been Senate- approved. The challengers have also raised religious and procedural objections to some requirements.

The Trump administration defended the mandate before the court, though President Donald Trump has been a critic of the law. The Justice Department said board members don’t need Senate approval because they can be removed by the health and human services secretary.

A majority of the justices seemed inclined to side with the government. Kavanaugh said he didn’t see indications in the law that the board was designed to have the kind of independent power that would require Senate approval, and Barrett questioned the plaintiff’s apparently “maximalist” interpretation of the board’s role.

“We don’t just go around creating independent agencies. More often, we destroy independent agencies,” said Justice Elena Kagan said about the court’s prior opinions.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas seemed likely to side with the plaintiffs. And some suggested they could send the case back to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That would likely leave unanswered questions about which medications and services remain covered.

A ruling is expected by the end of June.

The case came before the Supreme Court after the appeals court struck down some preventive care coverage requirements. It sided with Christian employers and Texas residents who argued they can’t be forced to provide full insurance coverage for things like medication to prevent HIV and some cancer screenings.

They were represented by well-known conservative attorney Jonathan Mitchell, who represented Trump before the high court in a dispute about whether he could appear on the 2024 ballot.

Not all preventive care was threatened by the ruling. A 2023 analysis prepared by the nonprofit KFF found that some screenings, including mammography and cervical cancer screening, would still be covered without out-of-pocket costs.

The appeals court found that coverage requirements were unconstitutional because they came from a body — the United States Preventive Services Task Force — whose members were not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered separating Instagram from its parent company due to worries about antitrust litigation, according to an email shown Tuesday on the second day of an antitrust trial alleging Meta illegally monopolized the social media market.

In the 2018 email, Zuckerberg wrote that he was beginning to wonder if “spinning Instagram out” would be the only way to accomplish important goals, as big-tech companies grow. He also noted “there is a non-trivial chance” Meta could be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in five to 10 years anyway.

He wrote that while most companies resist breakups, “the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better after they’ve been split up.”

Asked Tuesday by attorney Daniel Matheson, who is leading the antitrust case for the Federal Trade Commission, which incidence in corporate history he had in mind, Zuckerberg responded: “I’m not sure what I had in mind then.”

Zuckerberg, who was the first witness, testified for more than seven hours over two days in the trial that could force Meta to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, startups the tech giant bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.

While questioning Zuckerberg on Tuesday morning, Matheson noted that he had referred to Instagram as being a “rapidly growing, threatening, network.” The attorney also pointed out Zuckerberg’s referring to trying to neutralize a competitor by buying the company.

But Zuckerberg said while Matheson was able to show documents in court that indicated his concern about Instagram’s growth, he also had many conversations about how excited his company was to acquire Instagram to make a better product.

Zuckerberg also said Facebook was in the process of building a camera app for sharing on mobile phones, and he thought Instagram was better at that, “so I wanted to buy them.”

Zuckerberg also pushed back against Matheson’s contention that the reason for buying the company was to neutralize a threat.

“I think that that mischaracterizes what the email was,” Zuckerberg said.

In his questioning of Zuckerberg, Matheson repeatedly brought up emails — many of them more than a decade old — written by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram.

While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote them in the early stages of considering the acquisition and that what he wrote at the time didn’t capture the full scope of his interest in the company.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail.

In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies.

“The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday.

A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30.

The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations.

As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws.

Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment.

In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement.

The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office.

Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.

Amid rural Louisiana’s crawfish farms, towering pine trees and cafes serving po’boys, nearly 7,000 people are waiting at immigration detention centers to learn whether they will be expelled from the United States.

If President Donald Trump’s administration has its way, the capacity to hold tens of thousands more migrants will soon be added around the country as the U.S. seeks an explosive expansion of what is already the world’s largest immigration detention system.

Trump’s effort to conduct mass deportations as promised in the 2024 campaign represents a potential bonanza for private prison companies and a challenge to the government agencies responsible for the orderly expulsion of immigrants. Some critics say the administration’s plans also include a deliberate attempt to isolate detainees by locking them up and holding court proceedings far from their attorneys and support systems.

The acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Todd Lyons, said at a border security conference in Phoenix last week that the agency needs “to get better at treating this like a business” and suggested the nation’s deportation system could function “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.”

“So trying to figure out how to do that with human beings and trying to get them pretty much all over the globe is really something for us,” Lyons said.

This month, ICE invited companies to bid on contracts to operate detention centers at sites around the country for up to $45 billion as the agency begins to scale up from its current budget for about 41,000 beds to 100,000 beds.

The money isn’t yet there, but contracts are already being awarded. The House narrowly approved a broad spending bill that includes $175 billion for immigration enforcement, about 22 times ICE’s annual budget. The agency’s 100-plus detention centers nationwide currently hold about 46,000 people, causing overcrowding in locations including Miami.

ICE last week awarded a contract worth up to $3.85 billion to Deployed Resources LLC to operate a detention camp at the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas. The little-known company is shifting its business from Border Patrol tent encampments for people arriving in the United States — most of which are now closed — to ICE facilities for people being deported.

The Geo Group Inc. got a contract for 1,000 beds in Newark, New Jersey, valued at $1 billion over 15 years and another for 1,800 beds in Baldwin, Michigan. CoreCivic Inc., won a contract to house 2,400 people in families with young children in Dilley, Texas, for five years.

The stock market has rewarded both of these private corrections companies. Geo’s stock price has soared 94% since Trump was elected. Shares of CoreCivic have surged 62%.

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is in “no rush” to reach any trade deals because he views tariffs as making the United States wealthy. But he suggested while meeting with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni that it would be easy to find an agreement with the European Union and others.

Trump played down the likelihood of an accelerated timeline to wrap up deals, saying other countries “want to make deals more than I do.”

“We’re in no rush,” said Trump, hinting he has leverage because other countries want access to U.S. consumers.

Even though Trump has a warm relationship with Meloni, she was unable in their meeting to change his mind on tariffs.

“No, tariffs are making us rich. We were losing a lot of money under Biden,” Trump said of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden. “And now that whole tide is turned.”

Trump is convinced that his devotion to tariffs will yield unprecedented wealth for his country even as the stock market has dropped, interest on U.S. debt has risen and CEOs are warning of price increases and job losses in what increasingly looks like a threat to the existing structure of the world economy.

A bond market panic was enough for Trump to partially pull back on his tariffs, causing him to pause his 20% import taxes on the EU for 90 days and charge a baseline 10% instead. Meloni’s visit showed the challenge faced even by leaders who enjoy a rapport with Trump.

After they met, Trump told reporters that trade talks were easier than other business negotiations such as mergers. He said he had spoken with Chinese officials about tariffs “a lot” and the amount of his import taxes could be influenced by China approving a sale of the social media site TikTok. He also seemed to contradict his previous statement Thursday morning about being in no rush to make trade deals “over the next three or four weeks.”

Even then, Trump showed no interest in fully severing his tariffs. “Tariff negotiations are actually simpler than everyone has said,” Trump said. “A number of people are going to pay that number or they’re going to decide to go elsewhere if there is such a place. There really is no elsewhere.”

Meloni had, in a sense, been “knighted” to represent the EU at a critical juncture in the fast-evolving trade war that has stoked recession fears. The U.S. administration has belittled its European counterparts for not doing enough on national security while threatening their economies with tariffs, sparking deep uncertainty about the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

She sought to portray the U.S. and Europe as natural allies in Western civilization and said it was important to “try to sit down and find solution” to tensions over trade and national security.

The EU is defending what it calls “the most important commercial relationship in the world,’’ with annual trade with the U.S. totaling 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion). It was unclear, based on Meloni’s public interactions with Trump, whether the premier has a clear understanding of what Trump wants as part of an agreement.

His administration has said its tariffs would enable trade negotiations that would box out China, the world’s dominant manufacturer. But Trump maintains that rivals and allies alike have taken advantage of the U.S. on trade, a position that has frustrated long-standing partners and raised concerns about whether Trump is a trustworthy dealmaker.

Trump tried to push back against claims that his tariffs are harming the economy, saying that gasoline and egg prices are already dropping. The president blamed the Federal Reserve for interest rates rising on U.S. debt. Rates largely increased because investors were worried about Trump’s tariff plans and they became less willing to buy Treasury notes, while the central bank has held steady on its own benchmark rates because of economic uncertainty.

Hong Kong’s government on Monday defended its immigration procedures after a British member of parliament was denied entry to the Chinese city last week, an incident that has prompted concerns among U.K. officials.

Wera Hobhouse, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party representing Bath, on Sunday wrote on the social media platform Bluesky that authorities gave her no explanation for what she described as a “cruel and upsetting blow.” She noted that she was the first British MP to face such a situation upon arrival in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hobhouse had told British media that she flew to Hong Kong to visit her newborn grandchild. She is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China that has scrutinized Beijing’s human rights record.

The Hong Kong government, in a statement released late Monday, maintained that its immigration officers are duty-bound to question individuals to ascertain the purpose of any visit.

“The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose,” the statement read. The government added that it would not comment on individual cases.

The statement also said that Chief Secretary Eric Chan discussed the matter with the U.K. Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security Douglas Alexander earlier on Monday during the British official’s visit to Hong Kong.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian emphasized that immigration affairs fall within the scope of national sovereignty and the city’s government has the right to handle individual immigration cases according to the law.

The British government also issued a statement on Monday about Hobhouse’s entry denial last Thursday. It stated that Alexander had raised its concerns with senior Chinese and Hong Kong counterparts and demanded an explanation during his visit to the city and mainland China.

“Unjustified restrictions on the freedom of movement for U.K. citizens into Hong Kong only serves to further undermine Hong Kong’s international reputation and the important people-to-people connections between the U.K. and Hong Kong,” it said.

It added that the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy made clear that it would be unacceptable for any member of parliament to be denied entry for simply expressing their views.

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between a feminist group and the Scottish government.

Several women’s groups that supported the appeal celebrated outside court and hailed it as a major victory in their effort to protect spaces designated for women.

“Everyone knows what sex is and you can’t change it,” said Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, which brought the case. “It’s common sense, basic common sense and the fact that we have been down a rabbit hole where people have tried to deny science and to deny reality and hopefully this will now see us back to reality.”

Five judges ruled unanimously that the U.K. Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some groups and single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas and medical or counseling services provided only to women.

The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.

The ruling brings some clarity in the U.K. to a contentious issue that has polarized politics in some other countries, particularly the U.S. Republican-controlled states over the last four years have been banning gender-affirming care for minors, barring transgender women and girls from sports competitions that align with their gender and restricting which public bathrooms transgender people can use.

Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has signed orders to define the sexes as only male and female and has tried to kick transgender service members out of the military, block federal spending on gender-affirming car e for those under 19 and block their sports participation nationally. His efforts are being challenged in court.

Justice Patrick Hodge said the British ruling “does not remove protection from trans people,” who are still protected from discrimination under U.K. law.

The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament saying 50% of the membership of the boards of Scottish public bodies should be women. Transgender women with gender recognition certificates were to be included in meeting the quota.

“Interpreting ‘sex’ as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ ... and, thus, the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way,” Hodge said. “It would create heterogeneous groupings.”

The campaign group Scottish Trans said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the ruling, saying it would undermine legal protections for transgender people enshrined in the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.

Maggie Chapman, a Green Party lawmaker in the Scottish Parliament, said the ruling was “deeply concerning” for human rights and “a huge blow to some of the most marginalized people in our society.”

“Trans people have been cynically targeted and demonized by politicians and large parts of the media for far too long,” she said. “This has contributed to attacks on longstanding rights and attempts to erase their existence altogether.”

Groups that had challenged the Scottish government uncorked a bottle of champagne outside the court and sang, “women’s rights are human rights.”

“The court has given us the right answer: the protected characteristic of sex — male and female — refers to reality, not to paperwork,” said Maya Forstater of the group Sex Matters. In 2022, an employment tribunal ruled that she had been the victim of discrimination when she lost out on a job after posting gender-critical views online.