from herald
11:52am
Ms Cunningham is questioning a reference to Shabina Begum, a Muslim pupil at Denbigh High School in Luton, who challenged the school’s requirement that she wear its shalwar kameez-style uniform rather than a jilbāb. She argued the policy conflicted with Sharia law. Begum initially lost in the High Court, won on appeal, but ultimately lost in March 2006 when the House of Lords unanimously overturned the Court of Appeal’s decision.
Ms Cunningham says the respondents hope to use this to describe as the leadership role that employers in the public sector sector, should take when dealing with intolerance, particularly in a conflict of rights situation.
"So it would seem that what the respondents are saying here is that if schools have an obligation to take responsibility for the moral education of pupils, by analogy, the respondent has a similar obligation to see to the moral education of Sandie Peggie that appears to require her to get changed in front of men who say they're women in order to become less of a bigot, no doubt, for her own good and the good of her colleagues and society at large".
She adds: "The implication of that is that Sandie Peggy's disinclination to undress in front of one of her male colleagues is a matter of intolerance, bigotry.
"The respondent makes that suggestion despite having heard without challenging it her evidence that her personal feelings about physical modesty have been partly conditioned by being sexually assaulted on a number of occasions as a teenager.
"It says that a good employer like NHS Fife ought to be entitled to educate her out of that kind of intolerance.
"NHS Fife, the good employer in this talk, has subjected a nurse of 30 years unblemished service to a full blown witch hunt to punish her for standing up for her right not to undress in front of a male colleague, and then, in an attempt to evade the consequences of that conduct, it has attempted a shockingly spiteful public character assassination of her.
"It has subjected her supporting witnesses to groundless smears. It has attempted to drive a wedge between her and her lesbian daughter.
"It's subjected her to a protracted investigation of obviously false allegations of potentially career ending gravity.
"It's attacked the integrity of her legal team. It has defied tribunal orders. It has told countless lies.
"Its conduct in all of this has attracted, during the course of these proceedings, the censure of not one but two regulators, the ICO and the EHRC."
Ms Cunningham says in making this argument they have crossed the boundary from being "merely obviously wrong to being morally repugnant."