Prison officer who refused to use trans pronouns loses appeal against sacking

[IwantToRetire]

Tribunal judge recognises Army veteran’s beliefs as ‘protected’ but backs company as he failed to comply with policy

In a ruling seen by The Telegraph, Judge Amanda Jones said she was “satisfied” that Mr Toshack held a “philosophical belief which is protected” by the Equality Act 2010.

But she found that he was sacked because he would not comply with the company’s policies on trans prisoners, rather than his beliefs.

She said that two other people on the training course shared Mr Toshack’s opinions but were not dismissed as they had not refused to comply with the policies.

Full article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/13/scottish-prison-officer-refused-trans-pronouns-fired-appeal/

And at https://archive.is/PtmZr

(Cant find current thread, but if I have missed please post link - thanks)

Thanks for posting. I was just discussing this with my husband the other day and we were wondering about the outcome of the case

So... let's see if I've got this right: his rights are protected, but he may not exercise them at work.

His employer has a policy which denies employees a protected belief.

His employer's company policy prioritises prisoners' choice of pronoun - which is not a legal right - over an employee's protected belief.

He lost his job, whereas others did not, because they agreed not to exercise their protected belief.

A company has a policy which makes it impossible for a person with protected beliefs to do their job without going against those beliefs - if that isn't compelled speech, what is?

I wonder what other protected belief is it OK for a company to compel an employee to abandon in order to keep their job?

There's likely to be an appeal. I can see why employers try to balance competing beliefs but effectively it's compelled speech.

Is preferred pronoun use not a legal right?

Quite a few of the successful ET cases in this area of employment law were rejected at the first round and went on to be successful on appeal (and set precedent) so I find it tricky to know which ones those will be from reading the first tribunal’s transcripts.

Given that EDI and HR are constantly telling everyone to bring their WHOLE selves to work it seems hypocritical to begrudge a man who doesn’t believe in Genderism but would attempt to politely compromise to adhere to a company’s Genderist-influenced policies.

Yes I think the lower courts are pushing these cases upstairs

I don't think so. It can come under harassment/discrimination etc but it's probably a case-by-case thing.
We've come some distance away from when it was considered 'literal violence' to use the grammatically correct pronoun, but clearly some tribunals are taking the position that preference takes precedence over grammar.

So much for the (false) reassurances given by the Labour Government during the passage of the Gender Recognition Bill in The Lords in 2004 - and this applied to people with GRCs, not random men deciding they wanted to be called women.

When the Gender Recognition Bill went through the House of Lords the Minister for the Government, Lord Filkin, said:

"The noble Baroness also asked whether people who refuse to call a gender-changed man by the changed gender would be open to action. No, they would not, unless they had information about the person's gender history in an official capacity and they disclosed it otherwise than is allowed for by Clause 21". [Hansard, Lords, 29/01/04 col 411]

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2004-01-29/debates/f813c7d4-41a1-4cfd-8115-6be9753889e5/GenderRecognitionBillHl#contribution-4f7e4ad5-5e65-4c3d-8b8e-b0a0d8094016

I think you have highlighted what seems to be inconsistence.

For instance many employers will allow employees with religious beliefs to have them catered for within the work place. Even in other employees are not of that religion, or are of no religion.

But nobody is made to make a charade of somehow performing in work as though they subscribed to that religion.

And yet a lone individual with a person belief is given more rights than someone who is part of an acknowledged religion. The person's demand that others perform his beliefs by using the pronouns he prefers is given greater rights.

What's not clear from the article is whether the (ex-)prison officer was a) using sex-based, factual and grammatically correct pronouns or b) using no pronouns at all. Refusal to use preferred pronouns that differ from someone's sex could describe either.

If it's the former, there's a chance that this could have met the threshold for harassment, but presumably he'd need to be in front of the harassed person in question and repeatedly talking about the prisoner in the third person. That's an unlikely scenario, given most conversation is likely to be in the second person with "you" being used.

If it's the latter, I would expect this case to easily be won on appeal and for the prison to be told that its policy of compelled speech is unlawful. It would be equivalent to expecting a prison officer to say "Jesus is the son of god" to a Christian prisoner or "Allahu akbar" to a muslim. No employer should have a policy that requires someone to actively demonstrate allegiance to someone else's belief as it would fail to be lawful under the Equality Act.

Isn’t this the equivalent of saying that Jews and Muslims must eat pork in work to keep their jobs if that is what the policy says? (IANAL)

He said he would avoid using pronouns altogether and instead refer to the prisoner by name.

His bosses argued this was not acceptable and a lot of the arguments came down to a specific form used to handover prisoners being transported from court to prison and the fact that the prisoner could request access to the form. They also argued that it would take too long to write the prisoners name or initials instead of using she/her.

The options on the form were Male and Female and there was no discussion on how they would deal with a non binary prisoner. It was all very “the computer says no” and arguments based around policy.

(Cant find current thread, but if I have missed please post link - thanks)

Here you go:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5485962-custody-officer-job-withdrawn-for-gc-beliefs-thread-2

It looks as though the actual decision hasn't been published yet. It should appear at some point here:

https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions

Whose preference are we talking about here? The preference of the person the pronouns are used about, or the preference of the person the pronouns are used by?

Sorry I meant the former. Someone has answered.

In every bloody training course on management and Hr we were always told that company policy cannot override the law.

Everything in the world now has 'unless Trans' underwritten into it. It is a fucking disgrace.

How depressing. I thought the way in which this was handled would have also ensured this was a win

I hope he wins on appeal....

Thanks, no need to apologise. People nearly always mean the former. But this is one of many examples of manipulated language – the usual meaning has been implanted into our language culture, but it's not the natural meaning. Whose pronouns are they? They surely belong to the person using them. It's their language, used to communicate their meaning, but we are supposed to think that the pronouns are somehow the property of the person being referred to, and therefore they should have the right to control them. And this is one of the reasons it's a significant free speech issue.

Perhaps similarly, if I choose to call you one of those words we usually refer to by its first letter when we're talking about language, it says far more about me, the user of the unacceptable word, than it does about you. It's my word, and you don't have to accept it or own it.

A Scottish case so des not suprise me.

I will happily contribute towards funding an appeal.

I know this is a bit nitpicky, but Mr Toshack wasn't a prison officer. He was a custody escort, moving prisoners between prison and the courts. He wasn't working for either HMPPS or SPS.

I would definitely contribute to an appeal.

So person breaches their terms of employment and gets sacked after employers followed correct procedures and policies.

Employee chooses not to comply with employment terms and conditions.

I don’t get the outcome either.

IANAL but I think this has been deliberately engineered by the court to send it to appeal, when binding decisions can be made. GeoAmey are a shitshow of a company anyway, I hope they end up getting their arses handed to them over this. They do some prisoner transfers for us and they are absolute clowns.