Rachel Meade - it's a win!

[BreadInCaptivity]

x.com/legalfeminist/status/1744697995822526961?s=46&t=88gZvdSnTk70X8b2ZUPZtA

Absolutely this.

This case builds on Maya's so well - in so many ways.

Honourable mention also to Sarah Philimore whom is the most relentless and trenchant campaigner for women's rights and who took this on, despite not being in the field of public law. Go Sarah! 💪🏻

👏👏👏👏👏👏😘😘

Still working my way through. This also jumped out at me.

“191. We carefully considered those of the 70 posts which the Respondents had primarily focussed on. Whilst this represented a shifting position, given that they did not all refer to the same posts, there was a large element of recurrence as to the posts primarily focussed on. Nevertheless, had it been the Respondents’ intention to argue that the Claimant’s Facebook posts were accepted as a legitimate manifestation of her beliefs, but certain posts had overstepped the mark to go beyond a mere manifestation of her beliefs, and thereby constituted offensive material outside the legitimate expression of her right to freedom of speech, we consider that the Respondents would have focussed on these posts, and identified why it was considered that they were not protected but constituted offensive material vitiating the protection otherwise enjoyed.”

Shows that her employer didn’t do any analysis at all.

In contrast to her employer, the Tribunal did analyse all her posts and found that….

“194. We do not consider that any of her manifestations of her beliefs were of a nature that they aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms of others contrary to Article 17.
^^
195. We do not consider that any of the posts can reasonably be regarded as offensive thereby vitiating the protection provided to the Claimant in the manifestation of her protected belief. Whilst some people may have been offended by them, that is not the same as saying that the Claimant’s right to freedom of speech was lost. Freedom of speech inevitably will involve the right, to on occasion, cause offence to some people but it is clear that that does not preclude an individual’s ability to express such views.
^^
196. We do not consider that any of the 70 posts were abusive, incited hatred or violence or defamed any individual.
^^
197. We consider it significant that many of the post complained of did not constitute the Claimant articulating her own views but rather forwarding links to articles or comments on television programmes pertaining to the gender critical debate.”

The tribunal concluded that her employer objected to her beliefs, not the expression of those beliefs. It sounds very similar to Maya’s employer.

“201. We find that the Respondents’ contemporaneous state of mind was that the beliefs expressed by the Claimant were inherently discriminatory and transphobic and therefore unacceptable. We find that the Respondents’ attempt to draw a line of demarcation between the Claimant’s protected expression of her beliefs, and those posts which fell outside the protection on the basis that they were offensive, to be artificial and inconsistent with the contemporaneous documentation.”

And the Tribunal was unconvinced by the employer’s attempt to retrofit a justification on to their bias against her views.

And there’s this….

“In particular we do not consider that the Respondents struck a fair balance between the Claimant’s right to freedom of expression and the interests of those who they perceived may be offended by her Facebook posts. In reality it was only Mr Woolton, who we have found to have a direct interest in the gender identification/gender critical debate, who was offended and there was no evidence that the Claimant’s views had been expressed in the context of her professional duties.”

para 199

And also for this excellent comment she made earlier -

'I can accept no accolades. When your opponent states in official documents and in all seriousness that a piece of paper can work magic, then you can relax somewhat.'

Thanks @LoobiJee for your efforts here it is very important that you have the energy to do this

A question here i noticed that the examiners at SW regulators includes a LAY regulator.

Wonder how they source them, they are stonewall champions, can hazard a guess.

Smacks of the Bailey case and stonewall lobbying.

.

As a pp noted it was SWE/Westminster's responsibility to appropriately and impartially consider the motivations of the complainant (and notably not use their measure of offence as the benchmark) but regardless I think this puts SE in quite a difficult position if a person went to tribunal against Sports England.

You don't have to be Ben Cooper to pose the questions "what impact on shaping HR policy did your head of EDI have?" and "following Meade did that give you any cause for concern?".

If the answer is they had no impact then wtf is their job? If it was of no concern then clearly you have failed to investigate if your policies are legally compliant in that context.

Alternatively if the answer is "we hired an independent review of our policies and changed xyz" you've just admitted your head of EDI can't be trusted to do their job.

There is an argument that AW's complaint was made pre-Forstater but AFAIK AW's social media campaigning went on beyond this (stand to be corrected).

In other words if there is evidence that AW adopted a position that was arguably in direct contradiction with being a head of EDI in taking pot shots at the GC community and you did nothing - it's a very, very bad look and you'd be wise to start building a big tribunal budget fund.

Again, this reminds me of the employer witnesses in Maya’s tribunal.

“j) An addendum dated 3 February 2022 to Ms Farrell’s investigation report which maintained that four of the Claimant’s Facebook posts were “transphobic”.
^^
222. We consider it surprising that Ms Farrell considered it appropriate to set out her personal views on these highly contentious issues. We consider that this would give rise to an understandable concern from the Claimant’s perspective that she was not considering matters from an objective perspective but rather from a pre-ordained view, that the views espoused by the Claimant were less worthy of respect than the opposite side of the debate i.e. an employee promoting gender self-identification rights.
^^
223. We considered that this is arguably indicative of bias in relation to how she handled the investigation. It gives the impression of that Ms. Farrell had reached a decision on the Claimant being guilty of gross misconduct at this stage. Further, her reference to the Claimant being transphobic could potentially inappropriately influence the disciplinary officer.“

And then this para 234. Crikey.

“Further, we consider that the element of harassment was exacerbated by
pejorative comments made by Ms Farrell which went to the core of the Claimant’s beliefs. For example, her labelling the Claimant’s Facebook posts as being transphobic was clearly something the Claimant found deeply offensive and in itself would be sufficient, in our opinion, to constitute harassment.”

Harassment.

“236. However, we find that the overall duration of the Claimant’s suspension from 22 July 2021 until 12 July 2022 was wholly excessive and undoubtedly constituted an act of harassment.”

“…The Claimant, as per paragraph 85 of her witness statement, made it clear that she wanted to return to work and serve the community. This was always refused by the First Respondent who cited the front line nature of her work meaning that she was a potential safeguarding risk as she worked with vulnerable people.

Suggestion that the Claimant may pose a threat to vulnerable clients if she returned to work (2nd bullet point in allegation (i)

239. We find the suggestion that the Claimant might pose a threat to vulnerable clients was an act of harassment. “

”243. We do, however, consider that the Claimant’s return to work meetings on 14 and 15 July 2022 constituted harassment given the circumstances, the evident disapproval expressed, or at least implied, as to the Claimant’s expression of her gender critical views in the workplace and what we consider to have been the lack of objectivity within what was a contentious and ongoing debate between those espousing gender self-identificationn and those with gender critical views such as the Claimant’s.”

@BreadInCaptivity @LoobiJee this is what is so encouraging, it is clear from the judgement that public and private sector companies will no longer be able to take a stance regarding trans rights and force employees to accept it.

That means if you are subject to this sort of thing, you can chuck off your lanyards, delete your pronouns, refuse to hold candles for the none deaths of trans people.

Its so much better than a bra burning session.

And what’s more Stonewall are fucked.

Joan Smith's take on it in Unherd

https://unherd.com/thepost/victory-for-social-worker-harassed-over-gender-critical-beliefs/

I've just noticed Maya has dinosaurs 🦕 on her dress 😀 and the 'Victory House' plaque 👏

Fabulous news. Another stream of light piercing the darkness.

Oh wow.

Thank you to all highlighting the most relevant sections for those of us who haven't had the chance to read yet. It can't be overstated how important this case is.

What a brave woman and congratulations to the legal team. I don't have the words to express how important these cases are towards breaking the culture of fear and silencing imposed by TRAs and Stonewall around this topic.

What a world it is we live in that this needed to be done. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who fought this case.

Thank god for that. Phew.

Social Work England not doing their job properly.

“252. The Second Respondent’s failure to check if Mr Woolton’s complaint could be malicious, and not checking his previous social media history, is indicative of a lack of rigour in the investigation, and an apparent willingness to accept a complaint from one side of the gender self-identification/gender critical debate without appropriate objective balance of the potential validity of different views in what is a highly polarised debate. For example, Mr Woolton had described Standing for Women as a known “hate group” and referred to feminists arguing for gender critical views as “terfs”.

253. Context is important and merely accepting at face value a complainant’s subjective perception of offence is not the appropriate test, but rather that an objective evaluation should be undertaken, as to whether a social worker’s social media posts had over stepped the line in terms of their content and potentially offensive nature.

254. Mr Noyce’s response to a question in cross examination that you have to turn the question on its head and consider whether a member of the trans community would find the Claimant’s post offensive and discriminatory involves giving preference to one side of the debate. Given the vitriolic nature of the debate, the fact that offence is taken, is not the same as a remark being objectively considered to be offensive. Therefore, allowing the subjective belief of one party to determine where the benchmark for offence should be taken involves a potential abdication of responsibility for assessing whether a social worker has breached applicable guidelines.”

Yes Woolton is now in a tenuous position isn’t them.

“273. In view of this situation it is apparent that the views expressed by the Claimant were not extreme but rather represented her expressing her opinion in an ongoing public debate. The fact that the debate can often be vociferous, and on occasion toxic, does not mean that the right to freedom of expression in a democratic society should be restricted. An analogy was given during the hearing was to the divisive position of Brexit in the period up to and beyond the 2016 referendum, to which the Respondents both acknowledged that an employee/social worker would have been entitled to post their opinions, and we consider that the same entitlement should have existed to another contentious area of debate.”

mic drop from the Tribunal:

“274. We consider it wholly inappropriate that an individual such as the Claimant espousing one side of the debate should be labelled discriminatory, transphobic and to pose a potential risk to vulnerable service users. That in effect equates her views as being equivalent to an employee/social worker espousing racially discriminatory or homophobic views. The opinions expressed by the Claimant could not sensibly be viewed as being transphobic when properly considered in their full context from an objective perspective, but rather her expressing an opinion contrary to the interpretation of legislation, or perhaps more accurately the amendment to existing legislation, advocated for by trans lobbying groups to include, but not limited to, Stonewall.”

“Remedy
275. The parties are invited to consider whether the issue of remedy can be resolved between them but if not the Tribunal has provisionally listed, subject to the parties’ availability, a 2 day hearing on 12 and 13 February 2024. The parties are asked to advise as to whether this hearing is required, whether it is convenient and if so whether they wish it to be in person.”

I hope she takes them to the cleaners.

Whoop whoop another happy social worker here! It makes me want to run through the office shouting “men can’t be women!” a few times. But I won’t….

I hope she takes them to the cleaners

Me too.

Think of the political optics.....

So many LA's right now cutting costs/services and effectively on the verge of bankruptcy.

Yet they have to pay out £££ for their own ineptitude in adhering to Stonewall law (plus the £££ paid to Stonewall in the first place).

Bloody brilliant. Stonewall et al take note: we will continue to fund these cases until you bloody well learn that you cannot take our rights from us. Every. Fucking. Case.

Mentioning 'bundles' three times in succession is believed to cause a remanisfestation.

I belive it has to be said three times, at midnight, in front of a mirror. Go on, I dare you.

Well done to the team and congratulations all around.
It looks as if justice has been done.
What a brave bunch!

It’s great. Stonewall are toast surely

Who would use them

It's standard to have a lay panelist or case examiner in regulatory proceedings.
They will be selected in the same way as the other panelists via application and interview. If a panelist / case examiner had links to Stonewall they would need to declare it.