NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #56

[nauticant]

Judgment was handed down on 8 December 2025:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936ce28a6fc97b81e57436a/S_Peggie_v_Fife_Health_Board__Dr_Upton.pdf

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence was 29 July 2025. It resumed again over 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.
The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February 2025. Sandie Peggie returned to give more evidence on 29 July 2025.

Access to view the second part of the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to: [email protected]

The hearing was live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.ph/WSSjg.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Links to previous threads #1 to #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025
Thread 53: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404208-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-53 3 September to 1 October 2025
Thread 54: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5418690-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-54 from 28 September 2025
Thread 55: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5447019-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-55

But equal rights is not a π 😁

This is disappointing. It is not legally binding. It will be appealed: up to the Supreme Court if necessary. The Supreme Court ruling set a low bar for other legislation - where sex matters, biological sex must prevail.

We will win. It's just harder than it was.

And the ET judges are scared of the consequences. All those poor employers having to change their policies and their toilets. And all that accepted (not by women) wisdom that TWAW will have to be changed. This is the motive behind the spurious impact assessment as well.

They don't like having to change their minds.

Indeed.
And using 'she' of a man who was trying to get his wife pregnant with his fully-functional male genitalia is bonkers.

Words have meanings. Otherwise it could be argued that 'ODFOD' is a polite farewell. Because I say so.

How would you know? Unless utterly insane, Upton is aware of being born a biological male and must know that approximating the appearance of a woman will be impossible without extensive surgery.

It's possible for some men to look like a woman from a distance, provided they're well made up - a drag queen can sometimes pull off this illusion using stage make-up, for example. Once you see them close up, however, the illusion is dispelled.

Unless you're Upton, feverishly reading this Mumsnet thread for some form of validation, you're making assumptions.

As for despising trans women, I can only speak for myself. I don't despise transwomen - if someone genuinely has a mental condition which makes them feel that they're the opposite sex then life must terrible for them. However, I despise any male who insists on asserting his supposed 'right' to cause emotional harm to a woman by muscling in on her changing space, particularly under the circumstances outlined by Sandie Peggie.

I can never know how a man wanting to be a woman feels; I do know how a woman feels when she's dealing with a gynaecological problem and needs a space away from the male gaze.

Why?

He is a man dressing as a woman that is a fact not an insult. This case aside, that is fine. No-one objects to men dressing as they like. That should be where it ends though.

Yes, the Tribunal almost seem to be giving DU an ( unofficial) testimonial.

Message received and understood. Disengaging now.

How would you know?

Because she is a trans woman:

The fact you are trying to argue otherwise is ridiculous. Just be like the other posters and admit you don't care it's much more honest,

Agree. This is where beingkind and using preferred pronouns has got women.

Now women are not allowed to complain about the presence of men dressing up as women in our changing rooms etc. Moreover, this judgement is a clarion call to all men seeking to intrude on female spaces. Come on in, women will now be afraid to speak up.

You don't have the power to control the emotional experience of others I'm afraid You don’t have the power to control the preferred reality-based language of others I’m afraid.

Fixed it for you.

This shows the tricky ground of the word ‘belief’ in the Forstater case even though it was thought at the time the easiest way to prove the case.

Now,sex does not exist. Only belief it does. Anyone’s useful ‘belief’ about what sex they are is as good as anyone else’s.

Please, I beg you, can we move the discussion BACK to THE TRIBUNAL AND THE JUDGEMENT?

Start a new thread about people of either sex that look like people of either sex if that interests you.

If there was an appeal, presumably it would be a 'drier' case, i.e. more focussed on points of law, rather than repeating all the witness testimony again?

And Dr Upton doesn't have the power to control our speech.

He's a man, born a man, lives his life as a man, will die a man.

He looks like a man. A man with long hair earrings and some make up, but still a man. And a manly looking man at that.

If Dr Upton is too mentally fragile to accept what is a material fact then he has no business working in the NHS

Thank you for this.
It is quite astonishing.

Iirc there have been numerous discussions about what threshold would need to be reached to get 'gender identity beliefs' protected - for one, they'd need to be consistently articulated, which no TRA seems able to do.

Edit to add - I don't agree that 'sex does not exist' nor that GC beliefs being protected mean this. I don't agree that gender identity beliefs are automatically protected - they haven't met the Grainger test, have they?

Well part of the court ruling was that some of the comments that SP made to DU , including misgendering, crossed the line into unlawful harassment, so you might what to try and inform yourself, if you really are at a loss as to what the issue is here.,

Hmm. Let's hope this thread isn't another one that gets derailed from discussing the issues from the judgment.

Sandie won her case against her employer and let's remember that. Despite the extensive transactivist nonsense language used in the judgment, the grim approach to women's rights and apparent errors in law that others far more qualified than me are identifying, on first reading lots of experts seem to agree that an appeal is important and would be successful. If poor Sandie has the resilience to do this.

I'm not surprised that some people are accusing us of being motivated by hatred and bigotry and transphobia and all that - it's what they do, let them at it.

The best response is to continue pointing out things in the judgement that even we - not lawyers, most of us - can see are dodgy.

Well part of the ruling was that some of SP's words crossed into unlawful harassment.:;

Speech is something that can be controlled / limited.

Someone else's personal emotional experience is not.

'Sandie won her case against her employer and let's remember that'

Yes very true.

The comments about it is 'insulting' to call a man a man do seem rather irrelevant tbh.

I am so bloody sorry to hear that. Being attacked by any man is terrifying but so much more so when they are given keys to our spaces against our will.

Sandie won her case against her employer and let's remember that.

Yes. And the way she was treated wasn't some minor by-product of all this. It was harassment, it harmed her, and it has been recognised as such.

Another point of law is that the judge brought the phrase transphobia in to play, stated that there is no legal definition of this, then went on to define Sandie Peggie language as transphobic.

The appeal application will make interesting reading in of itself.

IANAL checked with DH who is, who says that this is a case that may well be reviewed and re judged at an appeal (ergo not remitted back to the tribunal)

I know the thread has moved on but I totally agree with this.

The judge's conclusions are extraordinary when you look at the evidence he was considering.

It wasn't a normative claim I was making, it was simply a statement of fact.

Someone else's emotional experience is not something that you can control. It's not even something the person themself can v easily control- it's their feelings!

When in comes to speech there are certainly limits. part of the judgement found that SP's words crossed the line into unlawful harrassment,