Employment Tribunal – Discrimination Case
Maya Forstater vs CGD
EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL APPEAL RULING
Legal Crowdfunder
MAYA FORSTATER – December 2019 – CrowdJustice
My name is Maya Forstater. I lost my job for speaking up about women’s rights and gender self-ID.
I took my employer, the Center for Global Development, to employment tribunal for discrimination.
The first stage of the tribunal (the preliminary hearing) in November 2019, was to establish whether my belief (that there are two sexes, that human beings cannot change sex, and that sex is important) is protected as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010 (and also whether belief in gender identity is protected).
I believe that while it is right that people should be free to express their identity and trans people should never be badly treated simply for being trans, the material reality of a person’s sex cannot literally change, and in situations where sex matters, it is sex that matters.
I tweeted and wrote about this in the context of the government proposals to allow people to change their legal sex through a simple self-declaration, and what this would mean for women’s rights.
I was not accused of harassing any colleagues and I stated that I will use preferred pronouns out of courtesy. Nevertheless the judge ruled that my belief, in itself, failed the test of being “worthy of respect in a democratic society, compatible with human dignity and not in conflict with the fundamental rights of others” (This is part of the “Grainger Criteria” for being a protected belief).
I am taking an appeal against this judgment to the Employment Appeals Tribunal. The appeal is on 27-28 April 2021. Index on Censorship is also intervening in support.
After that the case could go onto the Court of Appeal, or back to the Employment Tribunal (to hear the rest of the case).
Why this matters
The belief I hold; that women are adult human females, and that a person with a penis is not, in fact, a woman is shared by most people around the world. In the UK, while 1 in 5 people are willing to say that they believe that a person with full male anatomy can be a woman, 3 out of 5 do not (the rest say they don’t know or prefer not to say).
The ability to speak clearly about the material reality of sex is important for children, parents, people in relationships, teachers, health and social care professionals, scientists and other academics, policy makers, the media, the police, the judiciary, athletes and sporting bodies.
It is important for everyone in their everyday lives that we can talk about the two sexes. We can treat everyone with mutual politeness and respect, but this does not demand that we deny reality.
Being able to talk clearly about the two sexes underpins the ability to fight sex discrimination, to undertake scientific research and collect statistics, to safeguard children and vulnerable people, to give children clear sex education and protect them from harm, for women to have control and autonomy over who gets to see and touch our bodies, to have women’s sports, and to protect the rights of lesbians and gay men. It is also relevant to other areas of discrimination including on the basis of religion, race and disability. And it is important for transsexuals and those suffering from gender dysphoria, in particular children and young people.
The Judge argued there is nothing to stop people like me campaigning against proposals to change the law to allow people to change their legal sex through “self ID”, and to keep single sex services, but that we should use terms such as “women assigned male at birth” and “women assigned female at birth” instead of male and female.
In practice this makes it impossible to say why single sex services and women’s sports matter – because sex matters. The suppression of ordinary language makes this impossible to talk about clearly.
I am just the tip of an iceberg. Many people have been silenced or disciplined at work and in political parties and associations for speaking up on safeguarding, and for the need for a reality-based debate about law and policy on sex and gender identity.
The judgment in this case has already been used against me in other situations; to turn me down for work and to judge that my “suitability for Scouting” should be put into question.
Since my case became news I have heard from so many people who have been disciplined at work, forced to recant and apologise, or made unemployable for saying the simple truth that human beings are male or female and that they cannot change sex. There are many, many others who are afraid to speak up.
I worked at a think tank; a research institution that I thought stood for independence, intellectual rigour, evidence- based policy and willingness to challenge powerful institutions. These are my values. But I found out that I was not allowed to apply them to this topic.
CGD’s representative stood up in court and compared my views to naziism…
Maya Forstater vs CGD et al: the case that gave us ‘that tweet’ & ‘WORIADS’
10 July 2022 – OPEN JUSTICE WITH TRIBUNAL TWEETS
WORIADS = Worthy of respect in a democratic society
Maya Forstater did not have her contract renewed at the think tank Center for Global Development (CGD) in March 2019. She had posted several tweets questioning government plans for gender self ID. Maya took CGD to an employment tribunal in 2019 asserting that she was discriminated against for her gender critical belief. She lost that initial case with the tribunal judge commenting that her views were ‘absolutist’ and “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
Here’s a blog post written by Maya in May 2019 with additional detail on her tweets on the self-id discussion. And there’s a wikipedia page about the case.
The case attracted, and continues to attract, a great deal of interest, including this now famous tweet from author JK Rowling in December 2019.
The initial decision was appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal which overturned that decision on 10 June 2021. The Honourable Mr Justice Choudhury said that her “gender-critical beliefs” did fall under the Equality Act as they “did not seek to destroy the rights of trans persons”. The EAT concluded that her belief that biological sex is real, important and immutable met the legal test of a genuine and important philosophical position that is protected under the UK’s equality laws. In other words, ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’.