The chair of SEEN is being sued.

[PriOn1]

We can’t post Crowdfunder links here, but there is now a Crowdfunder entitled “Chair of SEEN sued for saying 'only women menstruate'by Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley”

Text from website:

Who are you?
I'm Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley. I work for an arms-length body to a government department (part of the Civil Service) and love my job. I'm also gender critical, and chair of a governmental department SEEN (Sex Equality and Equity Network). SEEN represents those who are gender critical in our workplace.
What can you tell us?
The way I describe the case is restrained by my situation. I am writing this in a personal capacity, but am still employed and must comply with my employer's code of conduct and the Nolan Principles of Public Life. This places certain restrictions on me.
I’ve given as much information as I can, but I hope that what I set out below is sufficient to understand what’s going on.
So what happened?
I work for an arms-length body to the main government department. The case has been brought by a claimant who is an employee of another arms-length body. The claimant is taking their own employer, the government department and me to court.
Among other matters, the claimant is suing the government department for allowing our departmental SEEN network to exist (on the basis that the existence of the network has the effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive environment for the claimant).
What is the SEEN network?
SEEN (the Sex Equality and Equity Network) is an official cross-governmental staff network. We also have networks in three government departments (including the one being taken to court). SEEN is known as the gender critical network and is the only civil service network that clearly treats sex and sexual orientation as concepts defined in the Equality Act, which should never be conflated with or replaced by ‘gender identity’.

£21,005 and 858 donations and I'm off to my bed.

Bloody hell. Brave woman. This has to end. Is there any legal scope to argue as part of this that these court cases in themselves serve to intimidate?

Good for her

I had a scroll through the SEEN website.

https://seen-network.uk/posts/2023-10-18-lets-talk-about-pronouns/

If Anonymous From Scottish Government ever sees this: you're not alone.

Did my small part from the USA while the UK sleeps.

874 pledges now, numbers still increasing even in the middle of a UK night.

That depends on whether the UK people are up with the baby / on nights / insomniac / can't sleep for coughing / etc

Holy moly! From that Times piece:

The letter cites efforts from some staff to “remove contributions to government consultations that relate to sex instead of gender” and “quietly briefing external organisations on how to circumnavigate ministerial direction”

So when we've filled in consultations, these weasels have been deleting our entries?

What we are seeing here is civil servants attacking our democracy by censoring the public and then victimising a whistleblower who drew that censorship to the attention of the right person. And the Guardian, for all their claimed support of whistleblowers, are silent.

From my extremely limited understanding its always preferable to ensure everyone has access to justice and having their views considered, so the bar for stopping people from litigating is very high.

But it does seem to me that suing someone for expressing their beliefs that are protected in law would seem to be discrimination.

Nearly £23k now! Go Elspeth 💐

Lawyer is sued after making gender-critical statements at work including expressing the belief that… https://mol.im/a/13216821 via https://dailym.ai/android

Interesting that the sort of views openly held by a number of Ministers: Kemi, Suella and indeed Rishi himself, are so problematic for their civil servants.

What would happen if the other parties capitulate?

FFS - all these cases have been awful for the women forced to defend sex and sanity, but this one seems particularly stupid. Surely this is a clear win for SEEN since GC beliefs are protected?

Off to the garden...

£23,600 now.

We already know that certain letters to MPs are removed by back office staff. I remember reading that on here years ago. Censorship seems to be everywhere.
(KJK has been banned from you tube again).
Free speech doesn't really exist.

This would be a terrible argument. As we have seen, there are plenty of rich racists misogynists etc. The depth of pockets of supporters should have zero bearing in applying the law.

It’s the vast number of small pledges that impresses - 974 pledges to reach £24,000, of between £5 and £100.

Grass roots stuff.

Can there ever be a judicial review of how the civil service operates? Can they be investigated? These people are not voted into power and have the absolute arrogance to corrupt public consultations? Surely that's illegal?

Wouldn’t that be a disciplinary matter for those individuals? The civil service code is fairly clear, the problem is that it is not being adhered to.

How you can discipline those individuals is complicated if those at the top are captured? That’s more complicated.

I’m not clear on the law, but I think judicial review is about policies. When GIDS was brought to judicial review, the policies were (as I understand it) considered to be legal. The fact that medics were not adhering to them was not a matter for that court.

I think if a policy was brought in following a tampered-with-by-civil-servants and therefore compromised consultation outcome, that that policy could be subject to judicial review?

Amount = £25,412

Pledges = 1032

I think so and possibly FOId as well to understand how it was developed

But.....

Civil servants write policy all the time there is nothing unusual in that. So the challenge is finding the policy that is suspected of being unduly influenced or goes against the law.

I should add, requesting equality impact assessments for any iffy looking policy could be very interesting

Isn't there meant to be a professional code for the civil service?