Trans people are facing a “workers’ rights crisis”, campaigners have warned, after the High Court ruled that employers can legally ban transgender women from using female toilets and changing rooms in the workplace.

The Good Law Project and three individuals brought the legal challenge against Britain’s rights watchdog over interim “guidance” issued in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal definition of a woman. The campaign group have since said they will challenge the ruling.

The latest ruling means that workplaces must provide single sex bathrooms on the basis of biological sex. Employers will be unable to allow, for example, trans women to use single-sex women’s toilets.

However, this does not mean that trans people will be required to use facilities corresponding with the sex they were assigned at birth. Instead, employers may be required to provide gender neutral facilities in addition to single sex bathrooms.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s guidance was published last April but was removed from the watchdog’s website in October.

It stated that trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services such as shops and hospitals, with the same applying for trans men using men’s toilets.

But Friday’s judgment also ruled that service providers are not required to exclude trans people from using toilet provisions which are in line with their lived gender, with a High Court judge saying service providers should be “guided by common sense and benevolence” rather than be “blinkered by unyielding ideologies” when providing toilet facilities.

Mr Justice Swift said on Friday that it was “fanciful” to suggest that the law seeks to regulate “every possibility that can arise” when providing facilities.

He also said that the notion that a person or employer was required to “police” the use of toilets “reveals the application of a ‘logic’ so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behaviour”.

It has been reported that the EHRC’s draft code of practice – updated in the wake of the Supreme Court edict on biological sex in April and shared with the government last year – will force service providers to ban trans women from spaces such as women’s toilets and changing rooms.

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But the latest ruling means that equalities minister Bridget Phillipson will likely ask the EHRC to redraft this guidance.

Jess O’Thomson, GLP’s trans rights lead, argued the judgement “makes it absolutely clear the law has been dangerously misrepresented”.

“Contrary to what has been widely claimed by politicians and the media, it can be entirely lawful for service providers to let trans women use the women’s toilets. The minister must now reject the draft Code – which is wrong about the law”, they said.

While this section of the High Court judgment can be seen as a victory for trans people, there are also concerns that it leaves deep inconsistencies in the law between the workplace and outside it.

“The legal situation for trans people, employers and service providers is now completely incoherent. What bathroom a trans person can use in a pub may now depend whether they are there as an employee or for a drink”, a spokesperson for the Trans Solidarity Alliance said.

“We are pleased the court has confirmed that the Equality Act does not function as a bathroom ban, but outdated workplace regulations have failed to keep up with modern times and last year’s Supreme Court judgment has made them entirely unworkable.”

The organisation warned that the implications of the judgement for workplaces means trans people are at risk of being outed at work, pointing out that they “may have been using gendered facilities without issue for years”.

“And it is unclear how trans people without access to gender neutral facilities will be able to do their jobs,” they added.

“This is a worker’s rights crisis for the trans community, and one which will cause issues for employers across the country.

“The High Court has clarified that trans people should not be forced to use facilities in line with their birth sex, but it is hard to see how treating us as a ‘third sex’ at work aligns with the privacy protections in the Gender Recognition Act or the Human Rights Act.

“We must be allowed to transition and move on with our lives with privacy, not be outed every day at work.”

But Maya Forstater, CEO of gender critical campaign group Sex Matters, which intervened in the case, said: “This judgment vindicates the EHRC’s swift action in publishing practical guidance in April last year, just a few weeks after the Supreme Court judgment.

“The law is clear. There was never any excuse for the government, public bodies, regulators, charities or businesses to delay in implementing the Supreme Court judgment.

“We are proud to have provided witness evidence to the High Court to ensure that when the judge was thinking about the black letter of the law, he was also reminded of the underlying reality of what words like privacy, decency and propriety mean in the real world for women and girls using showers, changing rooms and toilets.”

In the ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Swift ruled that the GLP “does not have standing to bring the challenge in this case”, and also dismissed the individuals’ claims.

Following the ruling, the GLP said that it will seek to challenge the judgment at the Court of Appeal.

Jolyon Maugham, director and founder of the body, said that the ruling was “very distressing” and described aspects of it as “deeply troubling”.

“This is a very distressing judgment for me as a lawyer, as it will be for the trans community. Aspects of it – that wave away as ‘workplace gossip’ evidence of what it means to be outed in an increasingly transphobic and violent society – are deeply troubling”, he said.

“They remind me of how the pain of women was once dismissed as hysteria. I urge the judiciary to listen harder to what trans people say about what their lives have become.”

The Good Law Project (GLP) has lost its legal challenge to interim advice released by the UK equalities watchdog that in effect said transgender people should be banned from using bathroom and changing facilities according to their lived gender.

The advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which has since been withdrawn from its website, was published soon after the landmark supreme court ruling on biological sex last April.

On Friday, Mr Justice Swift found the GLP “does not have standing to bring the challenge in this case” and rejected the arguments put by the group, along with two trans people and one intersex person, that the interim advice was rushed, legally flawed and excluded trans people from accessing services they had been using for years.

Welcoming the high court decision, the EHRC chair, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, said: “As Britain’s equality regulator, we uphold and enforce the Equality Act. This is the second time the way we have done our duty in the wake of the supreme court’s ruling has been tested in the courts. Both times our actions have been found to be lawful.

“It’s our job to champion everyone’s rights under the Equality Act, including those with the protected characteristics of sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. A shared and correct understanding of the law is essential to that endeavour.”

The ruling did find there was “scope for a strong argument” that allowing a trans woman to use a female toilet did not amount to discrimination against biological men, as some have argued since the supreme court ruling.

But in applying the ruling to workplaces, Swift came to the conclusion that transgender employees being forced to out themselves to co-workers by using unisex toilets did not amount to less favourable treatment in the eyes of the law, stating “up to a point, being the subject of comment by others is burden that anyone can expect to bear from time to time, and ought not to be a foundation for legal redress”.

The GLP director and founder, Jolyon Maugham, said this “wave away as ‘workplace gossip’ evidence of what it means to be outed in an increasingly transphobic and violent society” was “deeply troubling”. The GLP said it planned to appeal against the decision.

Maugham added: “I urge the judiciary to listen harder to what trans people say about what their lives have become.”

Melanie Field, a former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act, said: “Sadly this judgment has not provided the clarity many were hoping for in this atmosphere where there are hardline positions on both sides and employers and service providers remain uncertain of their duties. Its reliance on the provision of universal and ‘third spaces’ to meet the needs of trans people raises practical challenges and could impact on the overall availability of single-sex facilities and the ability of trans and disabled people to live in equal dignity with others.

“It is positive in that it seems to reduce the risk that a women’s service that chooses to include trans women will face a successful discrimination case from a man. But overall the judgment highlights the difficulties caused by having a new interpretation of the legislation which conflicts with the original policy and drafting intention. Hopefully the government will now take steps to set out clearly its policy on the treatment of trans people in our society and ensure the law reflects that.”

The high court judgment is a significant boost for campaigners who have been growing increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of application of the ruling across the UK.

Earlier this month For Women Scotland, the gender-critical group that brought the original supreme court challenge, took the Scottish government to court again over guidance that trans prisoners should be housed according to individual risk assessment, which the group argues is contrary to last April’s ruling.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of the gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters, which intervened in the GLP case, said the UK government’s equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, “should now lay the full EHRC code of practice for service providers before parliament without further delay”.

UK ministers are still considering final guidance from the EHRC on new rules on how public bodies, businesses and other service providers should apply the supreme court ruling in practice.

Last month, the Guardian was told that in a change in approach under Stephenson, the new rules were being adapted to lessen the impact on businesses and to ensure the guidance tries to balance single-sex spaces with the lives of transgender people.