London
CNN
 — 

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled that a woman is defined by “biological sex” under the country’s equality law – excluding transgender women – in a case that is expected to impact accommodations for trans women in bathrooms, hospital wards, sports clubs and more.

The court ruling on Wednesday is limited to defining the term “woman” within the country’s Equality Act 2010, meaning trans women are no longer protected from discrimination as women, although they remain protected from discrimination in other forms.

But in practice, the impacts of the ruling are likely to be wider than the court suggested. The UK’s equalities regulator has said it will issue new guidance on single-sex spaces following the decision.

The ruling has also energized the polarized debate surrounding transgender rights.

Judges said the ruling should not be seen as the victory of one side over another. But trans rights advocacy groups have called that “an insult” and condemned the court decision as exclusionary, contradictory and concerning for the trans and non-binary communities.

The group of women’s rights campaigners that brought the case, For Women Scotland, popped champagne corks outside the court and said it was grateful for a decision that recognized the need for protections based on biological differences.

Here’s what the ruling means in practice:

Implications for equalities law and single-sex spaces

The head of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission said Thursday that it will issue new guidance on single-sex spaces by this summer.

Those spaces will likely include women-only bathrooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, hostels, prisons, sports clubs, domestic violence women’s shelters and more.

Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said in an interview with the BBC on Thursday that “the ruling is enormously consequential,” and it brings “clarity” that “single-sex services like changing rooms, must be based on biological sex.”

Falkner said that trans people can advocate for neutral third spaces, such as unisex toilets or changing rooms, given that “the law is quite clear” that they “should not be using that single-sex facility.”

Falkner also said the UK’s National Health Service must update its guidance on single-sex medical wards to be based on biological sex. Current NHS policy is that trans people should be accommodated according to the way they dress, their names and their pronouns.

The ruling will also have implications for policing and prisons. The British Transport Police said in a statement that it would adopt an interim position that “any same sex searches in custody are to be undertaken in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee.”

Meanwhile, many businesses and organizations have said they are reviewing the ruling and not yet making any changes. British media report that the EHRC has been inundated with questions from businesses and public bodies regarding what the ruling means for schools, office buildings and women’s charities.

“Our updated guidance will cover service providers and public authorities, as well as some other areas; so both schools and sports clubs will be covered,” a spokesperson for the EHRC told CNN.

Trans people remain protected from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment, which is a protected characteristic under the equality legislation. The law also protects against discrimination by perception, which is when someone thinks you are the opposite sex.

The Supreme Court decision will impact women’s sports, but exactly how is unclear given that new guidance is in the works and many sports bodies and grassroots sports organizations already have their own policies in place.

Faulkner echoed the stance of World Athletics, telling the BBC that trans women cannot take part in women’s sports.

Guidance on transgender inclusion has already been published by all the sports councils covering England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as UK Sport, which supports high-performance athletes. But it’s not yet clear how that guidance will be updated.

“We are now considering what the ruling means for grassroots sports and clubs,” a Sport England spokesperson said in a statement.

The trans community is “absolutely devastated, because this is clear that but there is no upside to this. We have been basically stripped of the right to exist within UK society,” said jane fae, one of the directors of the advocacy group TransActual UK.

“What this has done is we’ve put the UK back from where it was in terms of human rights,” fae told CNN, adding that the ruling appears to undermine the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004. “Here we are 20 years later, and it’s been completely, effectively thrown out of the window.”

Under that act, trans women could obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC) for legal recognition of their female gender. But following the Supreme Court Ruling, those certificates appear to be only relevant in terms of deaths, marriages and pensions.

While the UK equalities watchdog talked of “clarity,” trans rights campaigners have said the Supreme Court Ruling raised more questions than answers, especially when it comes to the utility of gender recognition certificates and enforcement of “women’s spaces.”

TransActual has criticized the court for not providing a clear definition of the terms “women’s spaces” or “biological sex.” The ruling says a biological woman is someone “who was at birth of the female sex,” but it’s unclear how intersex people fit into the ruling or what accommodations should be made for trans women who have female anatomy parts (like breasts).

Although the court said it was not its place to rule on public arguments on the meaning of gender or sex, the decision has taken aim at a central argument of trans activists and progressive groups — that trans women are women.

And in doing so, it has ignited fears of broader “culture wars,” divisive policies and new restrictions in the UK.

On gendered bathrooms, for example, “the UK has had a much more laissez-faire attitude… what we seem likely to be about to see is the sort of imposition of an American style, ‘this is how loos should be,’ sort of thing,” fae said. “It’s Trump-ian.”

Following the ruling, JK Rowling, who financially backed the case, posted on social media: “I love it when a plan comes together.” The author and women’s rights campaigner has been previously criticized for anti-trans comments.

Other campaigners celebrated outside the court, singing “women’s rights are human rights” and holding up signs reading “Fact is not hate: only women get pregnant.”

But the backlash has been swift. Other women’s rights groups and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations have condemned the ruling and said it rolls back protections provided by the Equality Act.

“Any backsliding should be of concern to everyone that stands against discrimination and oppression in all its forms,” said Scottish feminist organization Engender.

Stonewall, an LGBTQ+ rights charity, said that it shared “the deep concern at the widespread implications” of the court ruling. “It will be incredibly worrying for the trans community and all of us who support them,” it said in a statement, also highlighting that trans people are still protected against discrimination.

A coalition of pro-trans organizations and unions has called for a protest in London on Saturday, saying that the ruling “represents the culmination of the concerted transphobic campaigning we have seen in recent years.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has so far been silent on the ruling. But a UK government spokesperson said single-sex spaces “will always be protected by this government.”

“We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex. This ruling brings clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs,” the spokesperson said.

Starmer and the Labour Party have long struggled with how to address issues of sex and gender. The Supreme Court Decision means the prime minister can avoid wading into the divisive debate and point to the court’s language.

Meanwhile, the opposition Conservative Party has attacked him for past statements that trans women are women and calling for inclusivity in the debate.

“Saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact and now isn’t true in law, either,” Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said in reaction to the court ruling which see called “a victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious.”

Badenoch has also called for a review of equality acts and the Gender Recognition Act “to ensure that they are there to prevent discrimination, not for social engineering.”

The government’s next challenge will be wrestling with how to ensure public bodies, businesses and organizations implement the changes surrounding single-sex spaces.

Berlin
CNN
 — 

It’s 2 a.m. and hundreds of people are lined up outside Berlin’s legendary techno club Berghain. Forget the Philharmonic or the Neue Nationalgalerie — this is Berlin’s most famous cultural institution, and throngs of black-clad dance freaks are hoping to make it past the club’s notoriously selective bouncers.

But all’s not well in Berlin’s club scene. Wilde Renate, a funhouse of stacked dancefloors inside a shabby old apartment building just over a mile from Berghain, plans to shutter by the end of the year. Just across the river, the waterside dancefloors at Watergate have sat silent since a final farewell party over New Year’s, ending the club’s 22-year run as one of Europe’s most storied electronic music destinations.

Berlin’s hedonistic, techno-tortured nightlife is deeply interwoven in the city’s cultural identity, and the string of venue closures prompted plenty of hand-wringing about the future amid rising rents, gentrification and shifting party dynamics. Naturally, there’s a German word for the phenomenon: Clubsterben, or club death.

“The days when Berlin was flooded with club-loving visitors are over,” Watergate’s management wrote in an Instagram post last year announcing the decision to close, adding that a “change in the nightlife dynamics of the next club generation and a shift in the relevance of club culture in general” helped prompt the decision to shutter.

An entire younger generation that came of age during the coronavirus lockdowns, when most of Berlin’s clubs were shuttered, was never initiated into Berlin’s famed club culture, one of the club’s owners, Uli Wombacher, told the local Berliner Zeitung newspaper not long after the announcement. “The generational leaps in this business are quick. Two and a half years of closed clubs makes a difference.”

Things have undoubtedly gotten tougher, as the wild and freewheeling Berlin underground that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1990s — when the collapse of communism and a prolonged economic slump meant sprawling abandoned industrial spaces and riverside warehouses made perfect spots for DIY raves — has given way to gentrification and an influx of big business.

Rents are up sharply, costs for energy, staffing and DJs have risen and the jetloads of young tourists who once packed Berlin’s clubs every weekend have fallen off, but if you know where to look, there are still few places on Earth that boast the kind of nightlife that continues to pulse through the German capital. Now, it’s a much more diverse cast of party organizers looking to remake (or perhaps just sustain) a club scene that first vaulted to global fame three decades ago — and to do it, they have to appeal to the younger generations.

But mainstream club culture in Berlin has also hit middle-aged respectability: The parents of Gen Z scenesters once danced at clubs like Berghain and Tresor in their own youth, and staid German politicians applauded last year as the country’s UNESCO commission added Berlin’s techno culture to its list of intangible cultural heritage — a designation also bestowed on things like Turkish bagpiping, European falconry or Inuit drum dancing.

So maybe it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that some of the kids want to shape a party scene of their own. Berlin clubs remain a welcoming destination for partiers and electronic music aficionados even well into middle age and beyond — but while younger clubbers still make up a good chunk of the crowd, their generation isn’t turning out in quite the same numbers.

Part of that might reflect higher costs and healthier lifestyles. For instance, several recent studies have shown Gen Zers around the world are drinking less alcohol.

But younger revelers are also seeking out a looser, more relaxed and freewheeling scene driven by upbeat, bouncier playlists packed with trance and throwback pop. Over the past decade, Berlin has also become far more diverse, and an entire wave of newer collectives are throwing parties built around a broader array of music — from Afrobeat to Arab electronic — in addition to stalwart Berlin club staples like house, techno and hip hop.

“Berlin’s clubbing scene started as counterculture, but now it’s so mainstream and less exciting,” said Jose, a 26-year-old student who grew up in Berlin, who did not want to reveal his full name for privacy reasons. “It’s also very expensive. Maybe that opened the space for other things to emerge. People are going to cultural events, to illegal raves, to more underground or lower-key events.”

Some of Berlin’s most famous old-line clubs have long cultivated exclusive reputations, with hours-long waits outside and tough door policies that have prompted scores of online guides for how to worm your way inside (some suggest donning Berlin’s unofficial all-black club uniform).

Perhaps none are as steeped in legend as Berghain, a towering techno temple in a former East Berlin power plant frequently mentioned as the best club in the world. There, the discerning (or capricious) judgment of the door staff has made the club’s heavily tattooed chief bouncer, Sven Marquardt, a minor celebrity in his own right.

The reverence for places like Berghain reflects just how seriously Berliners take their techno parties — but also grates on at least some partygoers who’ve been seeking out a more carefree atmosphere to just cut loose and relax, instead of stressing about making the cut.

“We’re not looking for this super strict and serious type of going out, which is kind of what I feel like Berlin was to me a while ago,” said Daria, 24, who did not want to reveal her full name for privacy reasons. “When people go out to dance to techno, you’d have to be this specific type of person who takes everything very seriously, who has to stay up super late. It’s something that we’re not looking for anymore.

“For me, clubbing is about spending time with people you like, being able to express yourself freely, being very careless,” she added. “And from what I’ve heard and seen, you can’t really be careless if you don’t know if you’re gonna get in, if you have to behave or look a certain way.”

The pandemic saw a surge of illegal open-air raves in parks and other open spaces around Berlin, usually in defiance of pandemic rules, and that scene helped fuel a resurgence in the underground party scene. The kinds of empty spaces that fueled the club scene’s rise in the 1990s are mostly long gone from central Berlin, but there are now plenty of raves — some legally permitted, many not — hosted in fields along highways and in abandoned industrial spaces on the far outskirts of the city.

All that’s really needed for a good party, at its core, is a bit of electricity, a halfway decent sound system, a keen crowd — and perhaps a few crates of cheap pilsner.

Some of the more established clubs have also been changing sharply. Suicide Circus, for example, has been around in Berlin in one form or another for more than three decades and has been in a location in a former factory complex near the railway tracks in the heart of former East Berlin since 2009. But in early 2024, the club rechristened itself Lokschuppen (meaning “locomotive shed”) and turned over some of the parties to new event collectives, who brought with them a younger crowd.

“I remember times when people went there just for the club,” one of the club’s managers, Jermaine Fuchs, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper. “Today, guests tend to travel after DJs or collectives.”

Emiko Gejic, spokesperson for the Berlin Club Commission, a group that advocates for Berlin’s club scene, said a whole wave of younger music and events collectives have been bringing “a different style” to Berlin’s club scene and broadening the kinds of offerings in clubs.

“They often host more of a community space. There’s a lot of young collectives — POC collectives, queer-based collectives, FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, transgender and agender) collectives — that are much more about identity and creating safer spaces,” she said.

“They often host events that have a much more diverse programming with film screenings, with panel talks, with concerts, with live performances. It becomes definitely much more artsy in some way, rather than, let’s say, just a rave where people just go to dance in a dark room with loud techno music.”

Aziz Sarr, 44, grew up around the nightlife scene in Berlin. His father, a DJ originally from Senegal, regularly performed at Dschungel, a renowned hotspot in 1980s West Berlin. He started organizing and DJing his own parties more than a decade ago with a pair of collectives, Freak d’Afrique and RISE, both focused on some of the hottest music coming out of Africa. Along with Ukai Ndame, he opened MAAYA last year in a space next door to Lokschuppen.

“Berlin has become much more diverse, you can see that,” he said. “And all these communities, they want to party, and so of course they shape the nightlife.

“Berlin is definitely one of those cities where you can go out to any kind of music,” said Sarr. “You can go out to an Afropop party, a techno party, a Brazilian party, an Arab electro party, an Arab queer party. I think there’s a party for any scene in Berlin — I think that’s really beautiful and it’s getting more and more diverse.”

Zuher Jazmati started throwing what he calls Arabic queer events with the collective ADIRA in February 2023. He learned to love Berlin’s raucous nightlife scene growing up in the city in the 2000s, and while he complains that a more commercial, mainstream type of clubbing has crowded out some of the counterculture, there’s also been growing space for events beyond thumping raves. ADIRA throws pop parties that pack clubs, but also community events, art shows and book launches.

“A party like ours would not have happened in any of the clubs that you had in Berlin,” he said. “I mean, an Arabic queer pop music party? Where?”

Rising costs have undeniably made it harder for the party scene to thrive, and a higher cost of living in Berlin — which once stood out among major European cities for its relatively cheap rents, which attracted artists and leisure-seeking party types — has put the damper on the party scene. Entry fees that used to hover around 10 to 15 euros ($11 to $17) not long ago have shot upward to 20 or even 30 euros. “A ton of my friends would be down to go out, but they’re just not really able to spend 40 euros,” said Daria.

“It’s becoming a luxurious thing to go out to buy drinks, to consume drugs. That all costs a lot of money,” added Jazmati, 35.

“Maybe some nepo babies, or some upper-class kids, but it’s not something that’s so easy to do as a working-class kid.”

He’s also noticed that the younger crowd doesn’t go out as much, partly after missing out on the ability to let loose at parties during the pandemic in their formative years. But the expense of nights out at established clubs has also driven a younger revival of some underground parties, and Jazmati said he’s hopeful that Berlin will find places — perhaps on the outskirts, in unfashionable neighborhoods or different kinds of spaces — to keep the subculture alive.

“Berlin’s nightlife scene was a subculture that was accessible, that was always for the weirdos, for the ones who never fit into society, who really wanted to have room to escape a little bit,” he said. “This is what makes Berlin fascinating and interesting.”

“For a long time in Berlin culture, clubbing was always extremely accessible for young people, for people’s low income, and that has changed a lot,” Gejic said.

But if there’s also been one constant about Berlin’s nightlife scene over the decades, it’s an older generation telling new arrivals that they’d missed out on all the best parties. “When I got here people already said it’s dead,” DJ, producer and Berlin club veteran Sven von Thülen recently told the city’s English-language magazine, The Berliner, about the club scene in 1996.

“I think the best times are over but I’m not sure where it’s still better, I’ll say it that way,” said Daria. “I mean just quantity-wise, and of the diversity of parties and clubs and people, I think Berlin is still top-notch.”

Rome
CNN
 — 

Holy Week and Easter marks the high point of the Christian calendar. It is an intense period of prayer and reflection and a time when the pope would be expected to be front and center of celebrations, presiding at several long public liturgies as Catholics mark the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. But this year is different.

Pope Francis, who is still recovering from double pneumonia which nearly ended his life, is unable to lead the services as he has done in previous years. His severe respiratory infection has left him unable to speak in public for long periods.

Francis is now almost a month into a two-month recovery period prescribed by doctors after leaving hospital on March 23. As such, he has delegated cardinals to lead the services in the Vatican and one at Rome’s Colosseum on Good Friday evening, although a Vatican spokesman said on Tuesday it was the pope who had prepared the meditations for the “Way of the Cross” at the Roman landmark.

While he is listening to his doctors’ advice, the pope is still determined to be visible over Easter, meaning the Vatican is on high alert for last-minute appearances. On Thursday afternoon, Francis made a surprise visit to Rome’s Regina Coeli prison to show his solidarity with inmates.

“Every time I enter these places, I ask myself why them and not me,” he told a reporter from the front seat of his car as he arrived.

He spent 30 minutes at the prison, a short drive from his Vatican residence, telling prisoners he was sorry that this time he could not perform the annual foot-washing ritual traditionally conducted on the Thursday before Easter. “This year I cannot do it, but I can and want to be close to you. I pray for you and your families,” he said.

The foot-washing ritual, which emphasizes humility and seeks to imitate Jesus Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet the night before he died, is something Francis has taken outside of the Vatican each year since his election.

Since his discharge from hospital, the pope has shown he does not want to be confined to his rooms at the Casa Santa Marta. Here, he is undergoing daily physiotherapy as he tries to recover his voice and has access to round-the-clock medical care.

Francis has also recently made surprise appearances at the end of Masses and visits to St. Peter’s Basilica, including one where he was seen wearing casual dress and without the white papal cassock. The Vatican has said the pope’s condition is slowly improving.

Expectations around his presence are growing, given the Easter weekend is a time when believers flock to Rome with the hope of seeing the pope. US Vice President JD Vance – a Catholic convert who was received into the church aged 35 in 2019 – and his family are among them.

Vance is expected to participate in the Holy Week services, including the service at St. Peter’s commemorating Christ’s suffering and death on Good Friday. On Saturday, he’s set to meet Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State. Along with handling the pope’s recovery, the Vance visit is a diplomatic tightrope act for the Vatican.

During the pope’s hospitalization, the vice president asked for prayers for the pontiff’s health. But Vance and Francis are poles apart when it comes to migration. Just before the pope was hospitalized, he issued a rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration policy – a rare intervention.

The vice president had invoked a theological concept, the “ordo amoris” (“order of love” or “order of charity”), to defend the administration’s approach but Francis refuted this claim.

“The true ‘ordo amoris’ that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the pope wrote in a letter to the US bishops.

The Vatican has also expressed concern about the USAID cuts, while a US bishop born in El Salvador has called for Catholics to resist deportations by the Trump administration, invoking Oscar Romero, a martyred archbishop and saint from the country.

Despite the tensions, the pope and senior Vatican officials frequently meet world leaders with whom they disagree and will look to find common ground.

All of this is made more uncertain given the pope’s health. Good Friday is a time when Christians commemorate Christ’s suffering and death, followed by celebrating his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

On Easter Sunday at midday the pope would normally give his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) blessing and address. This blessing can only be given by the pope. It’s unclear at this point whether he will follow tradition but, despite his condition, Francis has shown he can offer blessings and speak briefly in public.

After 38 days in hospital, and despite his continued convalescence, Francis has shown a determination to show up for Holy Week and many will be watching the famous balcony of St. Peter’s on Sunday, praying for an appearance.