Teacher Kevin Lister's court case starts today on Tribunal Tweets

[Imnobody4]

Kevin Lister, a maths teacher of 20 years, is taking New College Swindon to an employment tribunal alleging he was fired for not affirming a student's preferred pronouns.

https://twitter.com/tribunaltweets/status/1770010705019711637?t=46yG9nCCclvIz5b4-iq4cg&s=19

I've been following this one. There was some to'ing and fro'ing at the start about impartiality of the judge who I think has a case in appeal. IANAL and the significance of this maybe a misunderstanding on my part.

The TT coverage yesterday between claimants barrister, judge and head teacher, appear quite tense. I'm not sure if this is significant, or normal, but judge didn't seem willing to allow for barrister to agree with head teacher some key terms..so they were left undefined eg GI and GC. And an unwillingness to identify that one single person in the authority was steering the school in terms of supporting a child with issues around GI. Seems issues occurred pre interim Cass however they don't seem to be humbled, even now, that social transition is not a neutral act.

It's a frustrating case because I think the ultimate kicker is around data security and that is a career killer- regardless of concerns if not handled according to process. She was able to testify to whistle blowing, but its hard to see from TT exactly what happened and when. There was discussion about witness statements which are available in court with redactions and may not be available post ET. I hope once this is over, she will consider making her statement available...according to TT there is a lot of media interest in the case.

Is it over?

It's over for today but they're coming back on Monday - the judge wants to give the claimant the opportunity to add (if he wishes) to his closing submissions regarding direct/indirect discrimination and whether he's arguing he was sacked for just holding a belief or for the way he manifested it.

I think next Monday was originally scheduled for closing submissions anyway, but they got through the witnesses quicker than expected this week

About the 'names on the board' thing, a classroom board is sometimes used by teachers as a jotting/memorandum space as much as a teaching space.

When I was teaching (albeit in primary), if I needed to remember who was going to a particular activity later that day, I might jot their names at the side of the board just so that I didn't forget amidst the general hurly-burly of the day.
So I can see how it happened.

Sadly, he's lost. I haven't been following this, but just saw a tweet from him a few minutes ago.

Here.

I’m not surprised - without proper legal representation he was always going to struggle.

Yes, that was the one thing about this case I'd noticed in passing. He should have crowdfunded for proper legal representation.

What a shame. Would an appeal be workable if he had representation?

Can anyone find/ link to the judgement? I've been looking online but can't find it. Unless it isn't published yet...?

I am also struck how quickly the judgement was produced. I wonder if it would have been as quick if he had been represented. And remember how the tribunal, about pronouns, started with the judge laying out their rules around pronouns…

This is very bad for safeguarding.

What sane teacher would raise a safeguarding concern for a trans child now? There would have to be irrefutable evidence of actual harm (unrelated to their trans identity) to speak up and even then I bet a lot would hang back from doing so.

I'd put in a lot for a crowdfunder for legal representation for an appeal, NAL but think there are several areas he could appeal on - all the talk of pronouns suggests the court was biased.

He needs legal representation though. Without it, it was bound to end this way.

Oh dear. He said all the true stuff that we're not supposed to say out loud didn't he. He's just reacted the way you would if the student was claiming to be a cat. He's /right/ of course. The student is no more the opposite sex than they are a different species.

Gender-religion is taken seriously by institutions at the moment though.

He'd have been fine 20 years ago, I strongly suspect he'd be fine in 20 years' time because the current form of gender-religion in schools is not going to last, it is a craze. There will still be transsexuals but they will go back to being mainly men and older. (And nonbinary is not sustainable at all. Nobody should be forced so strongly into gendered boxes that we need nonbinary just to be an individual with individual tastes and style.)

I don't think this would be a good case to appeal and I'd be reluctant to help fund an appeal tbh. It seems like the kind of case that might be winnable ten years from now after more Mayas, Alisons and Jos have done the (female-coded!!) cases where the gc person bent over backwards to be as sensitive and reasonable as conceivably possible at all stages. Kevin's behaviour was understandable and should have been ok, but at the moment, we still need better than understandable. I fear.

Employment tribunals don't set a legal precedent, so that's something.

It was a clear error on his part to try and do this without legal representation. I'm reminded of the poor subpostmaster who represented himself in court when accused of pilfering funds - he genuinely thought that if he explained what had happened, and that there was a fault in the Horizon system, all would be well and justice would prevail. Doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

Oh dear. He said all the true stuff that we're not supposed to say out loud didn't he.

I hope no one here wants to say this stuff out loud, the guy was a homophobe.

Ftr I didn't know about that (the stuff in the picture, which doesn't seem to get repeated in the quote) and that is not what I consider "understandable" or think "should have been OK".

The judgment is here.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Lister-v-New-College-Swindon.pdf

The employment tribunal is broken - no normie employee can afford to use it without crowdfunding and most cases won’t attract crowdfunding.

This goes for pretty much everything, not just trans ideology related cases.

What’s the point of an employment tribunal that people cannot navigate without considerable legal expertise that is financially out of reach?

The judge criticised him for being critical of the baby purchasing and trafficking market and exploitation of women that is surrogacy? There is nothing about same sex couples exploiting women and babies in this fashion that is more acceptable than mixed sex couples of individuals doing so.

I’ve read a bit of it and he was opposed to the route the student was taking.

Unfortunately for him society is geared up to help dc ‘transition’ - what a loaded term it shows how far we’ve gone on this.

An adult warning a student of the harms rather than just affirming has lost his job.

We need the whole gender ideology system to be criticised but unfortunately it won’t be on this one case

Funny how the BBC are quick to report this case, but seem to have ignored the fact a whole tribunal panel had to recuse themselves in another similar case due to anti-Christian prejudice exhibited by one of the members. Or mention the fact that one of the previous cases they reported where a chaplain lost his case at Tribunal (Dr Randall) was presided over by two of the same panel members, included the one with anti-Christian prejudice, who just had to recuse themselves.

Thank you, Crone!

That's a long read.
There is a lot in there.

I don't think the ruling should stop anyone from raising concerns about education settings in general or about individual students.

It does seem to make using preferred names and pronouns compulsory, which is interesting.

It does seem to make using preferred names and pronouns compulsory, which is interesting.

It doesn’t because cases at this level do not set a precedent. However, for those who are saying he should appeal; that would likely be harmful for the wider cause if he does not have good representation as the EAT does set precedents. At that point presumably others would have to look to step in as intervenors?