A Christian school worker who was dismissed after sharing social media posts about LGBT+ relationships teaching has won a Court of Appeal battle related to her dismissal.
Kristie Higgs lost her role as a pastoral administrator and work experience manager at Farmor’s School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 2019 after sharing Facebook posts criticising plans to teach about LGBT relationships in primary schools.
The mother-of-two challenged a June 2023 Employment Appeal Tribunal judgment, which ruled in her favour but sent the case back to an employment tribunal for a fresh decision over whether her dismissal was lawful, which her lawyers told the Court of Appeal was “unnecessary”.
In a judgment on Wednesday – the latest stage of her years-long legal battle – three judges ruled in her favour, finding that the decision to remit the case back to an employment tribunal was “unlawfully discriminatory”.
Lord Justice Underhill, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Falk, said: “In the present case the claimant, who was employed in a secondary school, had posted messages, mostly quoted from other sources, objecting to Government policy on sex education in primary schools because of its promotion of ‘gender fluidity’ and its equation of same-sex marriage with marriage between a man and a woman.
“It was not in dispute… that 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 by the Equality Act.
“The school sought to justify her dismissal on the basis that the posts in question were intemperately expressed and included insulting references to the promoters of gender fluidity and ‘the LGBT crowd’ which were liable to damage the school’s reputation in the community: the posts had been reported by one parent and might be seen by others.
“However, neither the language of the posts nor the risk of reputational damage were capable of justifying the claimant’s dismissal in circumstances where she had not said anything of the kind at work or displayed any discriminatory attitudes in her treatment of pupils.”