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)

No.

Just in case any one missed it in the OP quote, though I am sure the DT was confident to print it, this has not actually been made public. Somehow the DT got hold of a copy.

I expected him to win, I hope he appeals and then wins in the higher court.

I don’t think you can put on anything if it’s against other laws.

I hope he has contacted the Free Speech Union. It was set up for exactly this purpose.
https://freespeechunion.org

Most trade unions are subservient to gender ideology and have totally failed to give gender-realist members the support they need and pay their unions for.

I think they helped him, sure I saw a fundraiser from them.

IANAL but I think they’ve been somewhat clever with this. They aren’t saying there’s anything wrong with his beliefs, they’re just saying this isn’t the right role for you if you hold them.

if he’d applied for an admin job in the same company that would be fine, because his beliefs wouldn’t be in conflict with his role.

It would be like someone who was a strict vegan on religious grounds applying to work in a cafe then refusing to handle or serve meat. You wouldn’t be able to do the role even though there was nothing wrong with being vegan.

i think most people with strong beliefs of any kind would prefer to choose a job where those beliefs didn’t have to be compromised, rather than expecting the job to bend around them, wouldn’t they?

If you can’t do the job as it stands then you would be subject to a capability assessment. Even if you weren’t able to do the job because of disability or some other protected characteristic. Subject to reasonable adjustment of course, but that RA wouldn’t change what the job involved, just the way you went about doing it. It does look like the RAs requested here fundamentally changed the role. If the policy says you must use pronouns (🤦🏻) and you offer a work around that seems ok to us but doesn’t involve using pronouns, you have fundamentally changed the role if the goal was pronouns themselves and not outcome.

I actually hoped he would win this, but I can see the point they are making

It would be like someone who was a strict vegan on religious grounds applying to work in a cafe then refusing to handle or serve meat. You wouldn’t be able to do the role even though there was nothing wrong with being vegan.
i think most people with strong beliefs of any kind would prefer to choose a job where those beliefs didn’t have to be compromised, rather than expecting the job to bend around them, wouldn’t they?

I've been struggling to think of comparisons, so thank you for this one, AndSoFinally.

I agree that it would be acceptable for a café that serves meat to decline to employ someone with an ethical objection to meat. I don't think that's unfair discrimination, it's identifying a candidate's unsuitability to do the job, That seems fair enough.

I'm a vegetarian, and there's no way I'd go for a job where I had to deal with the dead bodies of slaughtered animals.

So I'm with you so far.

But this man's job was to carry out the safe and secure transfer of people from Point A to Point B, not 'Transfer transgender people from Point A to Point B'.

Was 'prioritising transgender prisoners' preferred pronouns over the beliefs of employees' prominent in the job description when this man applied for the job? If it was, that would be like a vegan applying for a job in a steakhouse.

But if it wasn't, and just appeared later as a footnote in training, that would be like a vegan applying for a job in a vegan restaurant only to be told during training 'oh by the way, we sometimes serve fish dishes - you're OK with that? No?Sorry, there's the door.'

I'm not 100% confident that analogy works, I'm sure posters will rightly pick it apart if it doesn't.

Yes, policies can't be unlawful.

However how is anyone supposed to know that a man is a man and put him in male prisons if the paperwork says "she"

Im not sure that’s quite it, though?

If the policy was “safely transfer prisoners” then I think the RA he requested would be completely fine and they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

In this case it seems the policy is “safely transfer prisoners while making them feel respected and validated” and there is emphasis on use of preferred pronouns. In the evidence, one of the other managers states it’s important to use pronouns to stop prisoners escalating and becoming violent. So refusing to use pronouns as directed in the policy, means the RA he requested changes the role, and his belief means he cannot do the job.

And in the original analogy, I don’t think the cafe could decline to employ the vegan person, that would be unlawful. But they could insist that an essential part of the role was to serve/handle meat and that if the person was unable to do this, even with RAs (gloves or whatever), they could be dismissed on capability grounds

Bring on the EAT. Binding judgements are far more useful.

Sorry, sent too soon

so if the vegan was prepared to handle the meat, they would be perfectly employable and their beliefs would be immaterial

in this case, if the chap had been prepared to follow the policy, his GC views wouldn’t have mattered. There were other GC employees who passed probation despite their beliefs. It’s the fact that his GC views prevented him undertaking the work in the prescribed manner that lead to his dismissal, not his GC views in themselves

In the evidence, one of the other managers states it’s important to use pronouns to stop prisoners escalating and becoming violent.

This should have been pulled apart in cross examination as it's completely illogical.

It's entirely possible that if he was using sex-based pronouns, the prisoners could get violent and agitated - similar to the angry prisoner in hospital who became abusive to Jennifer Melle after overhearing her speaking to the doctor on the phone and saying "he". But if he's using no pronouns at all, how would the prisoners even know? I can't imagine any prisoners getting violent because someone is not saying something.

(Thank you @SternJoyousBeev2 for confirming that He said he would avoid using pronouns altogether and instead refer to the prisoner by name.)

Also this (see my italics below) should have been challenged:

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.

It's complete bollocks that it takes longer to write someone's initials on a form than it does to write pronouns.

I seem to remember there was a nurse who because of her religious beliefs was against abortion. And so asked that she should not be asked to participate in any area of work relating to abortion.

But cant remember the outcome.

So it seems this is a unique set of circumstances as apparenltly it is within the Abortion Act someone can say they have a "conscientious objection". Although is a life saying situation they cant opt out.

one of the other managers states it’s important to use pronouns to stop prisoners escalating and becoming violent

Can you imagine any other groups of prisoners who would be pandered to in this way? Of course not.

If this was common pratice the prison service wouldn't be able to function at all.

So why should trans prisoners be allowed to threaten violence to get their own way.?

This is not prison service policy. It may not even be official GeoAmey policy. We are advised to use preferred pronouns as a matter of respect, but its not out of fear of prisoners becoming violent. We always try to avoid prisoners becoming violent, because we don't want to live and work in violent prisons!

I currently have transgender prisoners in my establishment. We use best efforts for preferred pronouns, but if someone forgets, it isn't a huge deal. My current efforts are focused on not requiring female staff to search TW prisoners who have had breast implants.

Thank you for joining this thread and adding a perspective from within the prison service.

We are advised to use preferred pronouns as a matter of respect

In your opinion, would your prison management consider it "respectful" to use no pronouns at all when referring to a TW?

If it solved a problem where an officer had a religious or moral objection to using "wrong" pronouns, I cannot imagine a situation where it could be deemed disrespectful. The original solution, of just writing the prisoner's initials in the orisoner escort record, would appear to have been a reasonable one, and would have added a degree of clarity where this can sometimes be lacking.

As much as I hate the pronoun nonsense. I do see the point of the judgement. Employers can set what’s expected of staff and if they don’t want to do it because of a belief it might not be the job for them.
I can think of a few cases in similar veins where the person had protected beliefs but the employer was still allowed to set standards although none to do with specific speech requirements. There was a case where someone wanted to wear a cross but it was against uniform requirements. Someone working at a check out didn’t want to sell pork.

I don't think any of the comparative situations as described are adequate as a defence to his sacking.

He stated that he would avoid using pronouns by using the prisoners name instead, thus side stepping the issue.

There is no justifiable reason to require a person to refer to someone else on a form, or outside of the persons presence, by a sexed pronouns that is materially incorrect with the exception, at a guess, where someone is in possession of a GRC.

the point of the Forstarter ruling was that one could not suffer a detriment due to an expressed belief.

A better comparison would be a requirement to pray in the course of ones employment duties or say praise be to Jesus, to a bible holding prisoner, before transporting them to a prison or court.

A better comparison would be a requirement to pray in the course of ones employment duties or say praise be to Jesus, to a bible holding prisoner, before transporting them to a prison or court.

This ⬆️

It's his lack of belief in gender identity (and the management having a policy that forces him to speak and act as if he has one) that's key here. In this tribunal, his protected right to not believe in gender identity is more pertinent than this protected right to believe in god. He's not expressing a ("gender critical" or Christian) belief, he's exercising his legal right to not believe (in gender identity). This one ⬇️

https://x.com/anyabike/status/1749777661855940901?s=20

Edited to add that possession of a GRC wouldn't make any difference here. If someone had a GRC, you could still exercise your right to not believe in gender identity by avoiding pronouns - or indeed by using sex-based pronouns, as long as a) it wasn't deemed to have met a harassment threshold or b) you hadn't learned about their sex in an official employment capacity.

Exactly. The whole point, well good outcome of Forstater was that employer had to balance individual held beliefs as being of equal worth.

So an angry violence threatening prison should NOT be given more rights than a low guide generally good employee.

Its appalling to think that on 2 grounds this has happened.

ie that the different beliefs have not been given equal value, and that because one set of belief holders say they will be violent if everyone doesn't agree with them.

Shocking.

All these analogies about vegans and meat seem like red herrings.

(Someone had to say it!)

I'm with BonfireLady · 15 March 2026 22:45 on this.

Oops! And Hegehogforshort.

Exactly. The whole point, well good outcome of Forstater was that employer had to balance individual held beliefs as being of equal worth.

I would (respectfully of course 😁) challenge this. It's not about balancing beliefs as being of equal worth. What needs to be balanced IMO is a) the right to believe that everyone has a gender identity and b) the right to not believe this. It's a subtle yet critical distinction.

Point b does not require anyone to hold an alternative belief. If we see it as "balance of belief" it means that "gender identity belief" and "gender critical belief" are equal. This becomes particularly important in safeguarding situations, such as schools.... because balancing everything as beliefs makes safeguarding impossible. It would mean that, on paper, a child who believes themselves to have a gender identity that differs from their sex is equally as safe as a child who believes that sex is immutable. It forces staff to look at safeguarding through an equality of beliefs lens, rather than relying on known facts.

If instead, the balance is belief in gender identity vs lack of belief in gender identity, it brings everything in line with the Nolan Principles to which all public bodies need to adhere re objectivity. This makes safeguarding a lot easier because we're now dealing with objective facts, not a balance of beliefs.

By extension, it also makes free speech issues like the one in this tribunal a lot simpler, as the argument is so much clearer: nobody should be forced to use the language of a belief that they do not hold. The right to believe in something only needs to be balanced with the right to not believe in it.

Edited for punctuation.