Kevin Lister: teacher refused to use wrong sex pronouns, sacked: tribunal appeal

[MyAmpleSheep]

Is anyone following this case? The EAT hearing was yesterday and today.

tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/k-lister-vs-new-college-swindon-dbs

It popped up on my feed today. How on earth was this referred for a dbs?!

Mm. I am gender critical, but for a case to end up in proceedings like this makes me think there is more to it than meets the eye initially .

it isn’t a good look to make a natal female (however identifying and presenting) feel like they don’t belong in a sixth form class ( if that is what happened)….

Extracts only:

The maths teacher was asked to refer to a biologically female student by their preferred male name and he/him pronouns during A-level lessons but refused to do so.

A Bristol tribunal concluded in 2024 that he was dismissed for expressing his beliefs in an "objectionable" manner, which staff say amounted to "bullying and harassment".

Anna Loufti, representing Lister, said earlier he was not willing to oblige as he had previously raised a safeguarding concern about the teenager's wish to transition.

"Being asked to transition a child flies in the face of a gender critical person's concern about doing so," she said.

"The policy cannot be regarded as having no coercive element whatsoever when the reality is my client was fired for not having complied with it."

Loufti argued the college's gender reassignment policy "created a culture in which everyone was supposed to be positive about gender transition".

Lister argued that it "had the effect of intimidating gender critical staff into public silence", and that any staff member who wanted to raise a safeguarding concern about a transitioning student "can only do so under risk of persecution".

Full article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmvg9v8qplq5o

Bristol again, the tone policing is in full swing, it's not what you say it's the way you say, which is the Bananarama defence isn't it.
I hope he wins, we need more teachers who are aware of the safeguarding risk this ideology poses.

https://refreshinglawltd.co.uk/2026/04/balancing-beliefs-lister-v-new-college-swindon/

For legal practitioners, the central question is whether an employer can mandate the use of preferred pronouns in a workplace or educational setting without it amounting to “compelled speech” or indirect discrimination.

Definitely One to watch.

KCSIE now explicitly notes the safeguarding risks of social transition and allows for teachers not complying with pronoun demands (being neutral etc) so essentially he was ahead of the game.

I can't see how this can stand, given that fact, unless there's a lot more to it than the gender cult in full witch burning mode. Which, based on recent copious evidence (Darlington, Melle, Peggie, Redvers, the rest) I doubt.

Also, the whole point of safeguarding is you should feel free and safe to raise a concern even if it's then concluded there is no problem. Safeguarding a child should come first.

This is the exact opposite of that and creates a climate of fear where staff will feel unable to raise concerns in case they're sacked.

I was put right off this one by reading that the teacher in question refused to use the student's new name. That, for me, is quite different from insisting on using sex-based pronouns. I hope the judgment ends up saying useful things for us, but I don't think someone who refuses to use a student's name because they think it belongs to the opposite sex should be teaching. People change names, and have names that other people think are odd, for all kinds of reasons. OK if the student's new name was TranswomenAreWomen, there has to be a line... though come to that we cope with many overlaps between names and meanings, so maybe even there...!

ETA That said, there is likely a large backstory I'm missing... e.g., if refusing to use the student's name was part of refusing to participate in social transition, hmm... ok, I'll shut up and go off and read.

I do think we need to know more, but as for the pronouns - how does a person know that they are being 'mis-genered'? You have to have the situation that Jennifer Melle was in, where she was overheard using a male pronoun for a man, (In a case where it was highly relevant!) Otherwise, how do I know if people call me he, him, flossie, youknow who, whatever, behind my back?

I don’t think teachers should be forced to compromise their legally held beliefs. Being told to use a male name that has been chosen to signal that a female wants to be seen as male is not just a neutral position.
As a teacher, I always use a child’s given name rather than a nickname. If I were compelled to use an opposite sex name purely to affirm that a child wants to be seen as the opposite sex I would be extremely uncomfortable. What he was being asked to do is to ignore his beliefs and go along with the fantasy that this student was now the opposite sex. His only other choice was to not use her name at all. The fact that this upset her friends is secondary to the issue. She made this choice, she has to live with the consequences.

I remember this story from first time round. I think the zeitgeist has changed quite a bit since then, particularly as a result of the Supreme Court ruling. A few years ago, schools were pushing this ideology completely uncritically, causing untold harm to schoolchildren. DfE guidance, as mentioned above, is to prioritise safeguarding over social transition.

It's interesting that they have decided to defend the case. In JK Rowling's new essay, it was noticeable that she said that claims to her Women's Fund have, since the Supreme Court ruling, been predominantly from public sector employees. In other words, private companies have fallen in line with the law, because they don't want to defend expensive lawsuits from staff. Public sector organisations, funded by the taxpayer, don't care.

Yes, using a new name should be a no brainer because names ARE individual part of language and not decided by the speaker.

However, the fact remains, safeguarding concerns should be investigated even if you don't like the person raising them.

Reading between the lines, rather than helping this teacher find a compromise the college went straight into 'bigot, get the ducking stool!' mode and didn't help him figure out a compromise that didn't involve social transition but protected the child's dignity. None of this has been in the child's best interests.

However, it's tricky using neutral pronouns and a new name there is a cognitive load there. But I don't think he's arguing it was accidental. I feel there are lots of gaps and potential biases / misinformation in the reporting.

There are ways to not use the new name which could protect both sets of beliefs e.g. he could have said initial of name and last name, or - with agreement, just referred to last name. Or Just AB or CD - using initials.

It's not that hard really, but there was clearly an unwillingness to compromise, possibly on both sides, but it's a baked in feature of transactivism. It's comply or be punished: it's coercive control and it's teaching children to behave in abusive ways that will not lead to healthy relationships. It IS a safeguarding concern.

I think one news source I read said he'd asked whether the parents were on board which is an explicit requirement in KCSIE now. At the time in a school staffed with TRAs I think this would have been enough for the ducking stool to be readied.

Maybe they should go back to the historical public school model of just calling everyone by their last name!

My daughter ( a teacher) was telling me about a girl who came back to school, after covid, with a new 'non -binary' identity and a new name. Gizmo.

Im not sure how comfortable I'd feel using this new name myself, let alone going along with all of the ' identity' nonsense.

Naomi's old post on misgendering and harassment
www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/07/27/misgendering-and-harassment/
is well worth reading, if anyone hasn't - she discusses a bunch of different scenarios. The one she says is clearly harassment is

Scenario 8
When J makes his announcement, L says that she holds gender-critical beliefs, and is not prepared to pander to his delusions. She makes a point of calling him “John,” and referring to him using male pronouns when referring to him in meetings, whether in his presence or not, and in emails to the team. She says things like “Just like a man!” any time he does anything that she regards as stereotypically male behaviour, and frequently talks of his “male privilege.”
Comment
This is what harassment looks like. L is going out of her way to cause J distress and humiliation. Her employer must put a stop to her behaviour at once.

Whether that's essentially what happened here seems likely to be dependent on quite detailed facts; but then, also, her scenarios are talking about two adults in a workplace, not about a teacher with a duty of care and safeguarding to a pupil, and that must make all kinds of difference. I tried reading TT's threads but it's hard to follow legal arguments from tweets without having been there! Btw, I see that Michael Foran's domain knowingius.org isn't talking to me today, though the substack itself is fine; also, it's more than a fortnight since he put off a live chat because he was unwell, so on both grounds, I hope he's ok, and wish he were around to discuss this case and others!

It does depend on what the new name is of course. If some child decides, hilariously in their mind I'm sure, that their teachers should use their new name 'yourhighness' or 'fuckit' 'forfuxsake' I bet that wouldn't be complied with immediately.

I have a female relative who now self-ids as male and has a similarly ridiculous name. My feeling is that at least it's easier, for me, than if she'd chosen an actual male name! That said, there are so many names that (e.g., in different parts of the world) can refer to males and to females that I don't feel the association between names and sexes is very strong, at least not for me: I might experience temporary confusion whilst I learn that my Italian friend Andrea is male unlike my American female friend Andrea, but it doesn't last long for me.

Was it this case where the claimant saw it as a safeguarding issue because the school were socially transitioning the child without the parent's knowledge?

I have a feeling this is the case and have read this somewhere in the press. Why on earth the teachers who did this aren't in court not the one saying 'hang on a minute' is a mystery.

The case like that which I'm most familiar with is not this one but the one you find at the usual place under the heading

Exposing Nottm College's secret transition of a child to her mother

Stephen Flaherty

Learning Support Assistant at Nottingham College, fired for revealing to a mother that the college was enabling the social transition of her daughter and was conspiring to keep this secret from her.

He has recently won a small victory against UNISON which I haven't completely absorbed, and is still fundraising for his main case, to be heard next summer - gardening needed.

Was there also secret transition in this case? I had the impression not, but could be wrong.

When I was a child, teachers would still throw board dusters at children who were being annoying. I'm not saying that's a good thing. But I do think that we are in a mad situation now where teachers are apparently expected to defer to children and whatever mad ideas they hold about themselves. The school should just have told this girl, firmly, "No, you're not a boy, and we're not going to pretend you are." By defending this case, they are undermining the authority of any teacher who stands up to nonsense from pupils.

Many people choose to be addressed by a name that isn't their formal given name (not including stage names) so I don't think any pupil or parent would accept a teacher who only gestures towards them/their child rather than use their preferred name as he did for everyone else.

I understand he had safeguarding concerns and raised them appropriately with the schools safeguarding lead. Even if he disagreed with the advice he received from the safeguarding lead, and while such disputes are being resolved in private, choosing not to follow this advice and implementing his own "policy" is not going to be viewed well by his safeguarding lead and their colleagues, including the head teacher.

I think being literally fired and barred from working with children for 'gesturing' towards a child whilst tripping over a need to communicate under duress at compelled speech is a bit extreme though.

It's a bit sledgehammer and nut / burn the witch.

And given that any child who decided their name was 'fuckingwhore' or a religious slur wouldn't be indulged there is obviously some kind of boundary there, it's a question of where it is, and it will be different for different staff and students with different beliefs. As far as I can tell the school did nothing to consider that there could be a compromise for both parties here (last name, initials etc).