Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 2

[ickky]

The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

Send an email to

[email protected]

The subject heading of the email request should read

“MEDIA OR PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST – Case number 2202172/2020 - Ms A Bailey – 25th April 2022.

Then ask for the pin for the online access.

You will be contacted with instructions on how to observe the hearing.

When joining the live tribunal
select the video and mic that are not crossed out, this is the courts vid and mic.
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There is also live tweeting from twitter.com/tribunaltweets

Abbreviations:
AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, barrister for SW
RW = Robin White assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 1 👇

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

AH got in "the account was taken down" in a way to suggest deleted for bad conduct which I'm not sure is what KB was saying, even though she agreed with the comment.

Adjourned until 9.20am tomorrow. Starting with Mr Lue.

Sorry 9.30am

Is KB's evidence particularly relevant, though?

How did KB's evidence impact on the issue in front of the tribunal?
KB said AB was neither part of the management team or a trustee.

X-posted with @oviraptor21

Too early to call what the strategy of SW or GCC is.

We might not understand what they did today for a couple of weeks or even until they sum up.

Gordon Bennett. That's all I have.

All I'm coming up with is a claim that 'we had reason to think negatively of the LGBA'. Nevertheless, that does not justify in employment law how they treated Allison. In fact in a clunky way it could highlight how much they were inappropriately emotionally involved to the extent that they threw all caution to the wind and did not follow proper procedures.

These cases always end up being about whether employers follow proper procedures or not.

It's relating to the claims of indirect discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation. The Friday witnesses and KB are to do with data that backs up that women and lesbians are more likely to hold GC views. KB basically said all her evidence was based on assumption and was meaningless therefore. Hopefully just because she was led into saying that doesn't mean it's all discounted.

I wish I could take some time off work to watch.
Once in a while I am checking the tweets and then looking at the 'commentary' here.

Question - have the ET agreed a costs order against AB? If not, what is the point of Stonewall and GCC delaying? It surely can't be in their interests to run up legal fees.

Also, if having a crap bundle will annoy the judge, why do it? From my very limited experience it is the respondent who generally sorts this out.

So she was AH's witness.
His further point didn't stick but the general line of questioning of IO was following up their case that GC feminists are not primarily women and lesbians, which I'm fairly hopeful that BC will be able to disprove at some point.

The Friday witnesses and KB are to do with data that backs up that women and lesbians are more likely to hold GC views. KB basically said all her evidence was based on assumption and was meaningless therefore. Hopefully just because she was led into saying that doesn't mean it's all discounted.

That's pretty much what I thought but I don't know if SW and GCC will stick with that depending on how events unfold over the remainder of the hearings.

Although I agree that absence of evidence (and data) to support a position isn't evidence of absence, those parts of the relevant statements so far have been very easy for SW and GCC to dispute and to establish there is no firm evidence on which to rely.

I acknowledge that this is irritating given the evidence-free comments that we have been on the receiving end of in various MN FWR threads but that's the artificial setting of a tribunal for you. 🙄

Even if AB can't make her case on sex discrimination or sexuality discrimination, if the basis for the rest of her claim is firm - that her Chambers encouraged work to be taken away from her because of her legitimately held views - she has a case based on belief discrimination. The bundle so far suggests the management of GCC didn't like her views and believed her expression of them put the SW partnership at risk. There's also a suggestion that the SW partnership was a revenue stream for them (bringing together their beliefs/activism and their desire to expand an area of practice). There was a huge amount of litigation work in the market at that point and they wanted to be in the running for it.

The question is still whether AB can prove GCC discriminated against her once it was established that they didn't agree with her beliefs. And obviously whether Stonewall collaborated with them or encouraged them.

Is it in GCC and SW facour to show that Allidkn was not a trustee or committee member of LGB Alliance?

Has some poor sod now got to abandon their evening and work into the night on the monstrous bundle?

Although I'm not allowed to quote from the bundle, I can say that the bundle definitely doesn't NOT blow out of the water Stonewall's claim that it wasn't trying to persuade organisations to remove the terms 'mother' and 'father' from their policies. (We know they were, but this is beautifully clear.)

I assume the hardest thing will be to show that there was a firm connection between not liking her views and the reduction in income, or whatever other detriments there were. I guess she has to show causation, and they will be trying to show there were other reasons for the reduction I work, or just that her evidence of causation is lacking.

Weirdly it seems most obvious that gc feminism is populated by females, but that might be hard to prove because of the lack of data. I wonder if it wld have been more effective to have lots & lots of ppl who have been active saying 'I have mostly met women through this' rather than the organisations themselves. They could have got Daley Thompson to say 'I went to the fpfw meeting on sport and there were hardly any blokes there'. Might have believed it then.

I wonder if it wld have been more effective to have lots & lots of ppl who have been active saying 'I have mostly met women through this' rather than the organisations themselves. They could have got Daley Thompson to say 'I went to the fpfw meeting on sport and there were hardly any blokes there'. Might have believed it then.

Oh be reasonable, the Tribunal's software platform couldn't begin to cope with the number of observers if Daley Thompson had been scheduled! 😄 I was there (and very close to DT) and there are artististic renderings of the audience photos for various meetings that make it very obvious it's overwhelmingly female attendees.

Examples: womansplaceuk.org/2021/10/27/record-womans-place-uk-meetings/

"... doesn't not... wasn't..." tricky triple negative there but I think i follow 😀

Even if AB can't make her case on sex discrimination or sexuality discrimination, if the basis for the rest of her claim is firm - that her Chambers encouraged work to be taken away from her because of her legitimately held views - she has a case based on belief discrimination.

I assume this is about damage limitation. If GCC and Stonewall are found to have discriminated, for this to have been discrimination on the basis of her sex or her sexuality would look terrible, but if it was on the basis of her beliefs it could be spun as "we will always discriminate against bigots, even if it means we lose in court".

Sharron Davies' photo of the FPFW/WPUK sports event, A Woman's Place Is On The Podium.

rdln.wordpress.com/2019/07/14/mass-meeting-for-womens-rights-in-sport-shows-this-is-a-hot-issue/

The last bit of today confused me.

What has the Charity Commission's decision and LGBA revising their social media policy in 2021 got to do with Allison being targeted 2 years earlier in 2019? Can SW see into the future?

Remember that the strategy of Stonewall and GCC is for "gender critical feminists" to be conflated with all kinds of people who oppose self-ID, which does include conservative men and people motivated by religious beliefs, who are certainly not feminists, and to characterise both positions as sitting under an umbrella of "anti-trans".

aka Women are whoever men say they are and is convenient for men at the time or for a particular rhetorical device.