The makers of the Adult Human Female documentary, Deirdre O'Neill and Michael Wayne, have been given leave to appeal the ET judgement that went against them and in favour of UCU, concerning UCU's actions in trying to prevent the film being shown. In what to my unlawyerly mind was an extraordinary judgement, the ET judge basically agreed with UCU that the film makers were bigots and it was fine to shut them down. It is hard to imagine anything more delightful than Naomi and Charlotte explaining the problems with this to a new judge, and UCU plays a large part in enforcing gender ideology in universities: this would be a great case to win, especially at appeal where it will set precedent.
Thread about the original case as it was being heard:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5294574-ucu-being-taken-to-tribunal-over-discrimination-for-gc-views
Thread when the adverse judgement came out:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5351523-employment-tribunal-ucu-vs-adult-human-female-makers-lost
Twitter link with an example of the advertisement for the screening that the ET thought was objectionable:
https://x.com/JRLevinsLaw/status/1995430636786770368
Text from the gardening site (check you have the page where the URL ends -2 for the current installment):
In Defence of Academic Freedom: Adult Human Female
by Deirdre O'Neill and Michael Wayne
As many of you know, we have taken our academic trade union UCU to tribunal after it twice successfully campaigned to prevent the screening of our film Adult Human Female at Edinburgh University. This is a film whose subtitle is: ‘a documentary in defence of women’s rights’. Having failed to get assurances from UCU general secretary Jo Grady that the union would defend our right to show the film on university campuses, we felt we had no choice but to act. UCU has become a bastion of harassment, bullying and censorship whenever reasoned concerns have been raised about the implications of trans rights claims for women. UCU's part in getting our film cancelled seemed to encapsulate so much of what has gone wrong. So it was incredibly disappointing and frustrating for us and our supporters, that the tribunal found against us.
However, with the help of our supporters over the summer of 2025 our campaign raised the £6600 needed to ask for leave to appeal that decision. A judge has now ruled that all our grounds of appeal are reasonably argued, and the appeal will be listed at the Employment Appeal Tribunal with a time estimate of two days. Our appeal will be heard no earlier than October 2026.
Naturally we are pleased that we still have a chance to make UCU accountable for its actions and try and achieve a course correction in its behaviour by legal means. But once again we must reach out to our supporters and ask for financial help. We are convinced that this issue and this case is important enough for free speech in higher education to do this, although we are aware of the wider economic context in which so many people are struggling. But if you are able to contribute, no matter how small, then together we can take this fight to appeal and still hold UCU to account.
We have an initial target of £1000 but to cover the costs of the appeal we will need to raise £54,000. We managed a similar sum for our first case, we hope with your support we can reach our target for appeal.
Thank you for your support.