The 'judgment with reasons' from Higgs v Farmor's School here.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f86f3e3e90e07415b7c9de5/Mrs_K_Higgs_V_Farmor_s_School_-1401264.2019-_Judgment.pdf
If I'm understanding correctly (I'm so tired) it looks like this judge found Maya's beliefs being found to be NWORIADS ''strange'' and went the opposite way, saying K Higgs beliefs satisfied the final test in Grainger and were protected under the EA (this was before Maya won her appeal, I'm surprised I hadn't seen this anywhere).
Looks like the school argued they didn't sack her for her beliefs, but because she breached their code of conduct re social media use.
Higgs argued that her account was private, and therefore being punished for posts breached her article 8 rights. Court said she had over a 100 followers, including parents of children at the school where she worked, and had no ''real expectation of privacy''.
52.There was nothing to prevent anyone taking screenshots of Mrs Higgs’ postings and circulating them more widely, as Mrs Higgs accepted. The fact is that anyone posting on such a platform as Facebook effectively loses control of their posts, at least when a large number of people can access them. In all the circumstances, we did not consider she had any real expectation of “privacy” in relation to matters that she had chosen to publish in this way. The School was fully entitled to take action in relation to the posts.
Higgs claimed all of the following was harassment:
-The disciplinary investigation.
-The suspension
-The investigation meeting and questioning of her
-Inaccurate notes of meetings, requiring work by her to correct
-The investigation report incorporated the inaccurate note of the meeting of 30 October, which she was not given the opportunity to correct
-The investigation report, which went before the disciplinary and appeal panels, incorporated Facebook posts which formed no part of the case against her.
- The disciplinary hearing on 19 December, including its length, the number of people involved for the School and the comments made by them
-The summary dismissal
-The contents of the dismissal letter
-The appeal hearing including its length, the number of people involved for the School
-The rejection of her appeal
The court disagreed:
75. In short, this was an unexceptional disciplinary process. Whilst it clearly would have been unpleasant for Mrs Higgs to experience it, we were not satisfied that the conduct had either the purpose or effect of violating her dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her.
76. Our conclusion therefore was that Mrs Higgs was not directly discriminated against on the ground of religion and nor was she harassed
Think para 65 is the most important:
-
It is important to bear in mind that this was not a claim of unfair dismissal. We were not concerned to decide whether the School’s actions were reasonable or not. It might be contended that there was a different course of action the School could have taken, in the light of the position made clear by Mrs Higgs in the disciplinary process. Since she denied being homophobic or transphobic, a reasonable employer might have taken the view that justice would be served by her (or the School) making it clear that if anyone thought she held those views they had got “the wrong end of the stick” – that pupils and parents should not be concerned that she would demonstrate any sort of hostility to gay or trans pupils (or indeed gay or trans parents ).