Dismissal for Facebook posts expressing gender critical beliefs was discriminatory (Higgs v Farmor’s School)

There was no need for the claimant’s dismissal claim to be remitted to the employment tribunal as the tribunal would be bound on the particular facts to find that the claimant’s dismissal was not objectively justified and, accordingly, that it constituted unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. The claimant’s beliefs that gender is binary and that same-sex marriage cannot be equated with marriage between a man and a woman are protected beliefs. Even if it was assumed that the respondent was entitled to take objection to the posts she had made on Facebook which expressed these beliefs (eg because the language was gratuitously offensive to gay and/or trans people and used in the context of sex education in schools which made it relevant to the claimant’s work), the dismissal was unquestionably a disproportionate response, according to the Court of Appeal.

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