Speakers in the workplace should not harass gender critical employees
Speakers in the workplace should not harass gender critical employees
Latest: Aug. 19, 2025
My grounds of appeal in full
IN THE EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL BETWEEN
MELANIE NEWMAN Appellant
- and-
COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS Respondent
____________________
GROUNDS OF …
Read moreSpeakers in the workplace should not harass gender critical employees
My aims
I do not aim to attack the police force with which I serve or to seek substantial compensation. My goal is to help put a stop to the widespread denigration and demonisation of those who hold gender-critical views, especially in contexts like policing, teaching, healthcare and social work, where duties of safeguarding, impartiality etc are key. This will also help people in other contexts who hold protected beliefs but are subject to the same type of harassment.
Background
I am a gender critical (GC) police officer. Put simply, this means I think the recognition of two unchangeable biological sexes (male and female) is important. For example, recognising the two sexes and providing single-sex services can improve women's safety; while sex-segregated sporting events can ensure fair competition for women.
These GC views conflict with those of some trans people and their allies, who believe society should treat people according to their chosen identity. The Supreme Court recently held that this approach to the Equality Act would seriously undermine protections for women.
GC views are mainstream views that are not only protected under the Equality Act 2010 but are also aligned with the law.
In March 2023, I attended a Trans Day of Visibility event held by my police force's LGBT Network. Senior personnel from my force and officers and staff from other police forces attended. At the event, one of the invited speakers referred to GC people as having "warped, twisted views", said that they were "obsessed", showed "cult-like behaviour", and that trans people were an "easy target for their hate". The speaker urged the police audience to take action to stop GC people "getting away with it". There was no challenge from the organisers or the floor, and the speaker was applauded and thanked by the audience at the talk's conclusion. Later in the event, Posie Parker, a prominent GC activist, was mentioned, and the audience hissed.
After the event, an officer based in my command area posted a photograph of himself on social media with the relevant speaker and others, praising them as "inspirational" and referring to a renewed drive to change, to "help shape policy and give a voice to everyone".
After raising concerns about this event internally through multiple channels and asking that attendees be informed that GC views are legitimate, I eventually took my employer to employment tribunal. I claimed discrimination (harassment) against me as a GC officer. The case was heard at a tribunal in March 2025. Judgment was handed down in June 2025. While noting that after I brought the case my force had validated my concerns and taken appropriate action, the tribunal decided I had not been harassed.
The tribunal considered freedom of speech under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). It decided that finding in my favour could result in a "chilling effect" on speakers' rights to express offensive views and audiences' rights to hear such views and understand the nature of the debate in question.
The judgment is here:
https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/newman-v-commissioner-of-police-of-the-metropolis/
How strong is my case?
My legal team believes there are numerous errors of law in this judgment. In particular, it interpreted a key recent legal case on freedom of speech - Higgs v Farmor's School - as meaning that Article 10 ECHR constrains an employer's ability to control workplace harassment. In addition, I feel the judgment did not sufficiently consider the impact of the event on my freedom of speech or that of other GC officers. My lawyers think I have a good prospect of success on appeal.
How will success at appeal benefit others?
Talks of the kind that took place at my workplace are common, especially in the public sector. I believe they can contribute to an environment in which employees feel they cannot always safely speak out about the relevance and importance of sex. This is the case in many different sectors but it is particularly important that police, teachers, social workers and clinicians are able to acknowledge the fact that sex is real and sometimes matters in their work.
My legal team
I am represented by Richard Linskell of Gunnercooke LLP and Naomi Cunnigham and Will Young of Outer Temple Chambers.
Thanks for the support. I will publish the grounds of appeal as soon as they have been lodged with the Appeal Tribunal and keep you updated with legal developments here.
M Newman
Aug. 19, 2025
My grounds of appeal in full
IN THE EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL BETWEEN
MELANIE NEWMAN Appellant
- and-
COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS Respondent
____________________
GROUNDS OF APPEAL
_____________________
Harassment: misinterpretation of s.26(1)(a)
- The tribunal asked itself the wrong question in focusing on whether the conduct complained of was related to the claimant’s1 protected belief and concluding that it was not. The correct question, which the tribunal did not ask or answer, was whether the conduct was related to “a relevant protected characteristic”. Words demonising those who have a protected characteristic and holding them up to contempt and ridicule necessarily comprise conduct related to that protected characteristic.
- Further or as a result the tribunal applied too strict a test of causation when interpreting “related to”:
a. in concluding that because the holders of gender critical beliefs were not in the minds of those who invited Eva Echo (“EE”) to speak at the event, the act of inviting EE was “not... conduct related to their protected belief”.
b. Misinterpreting the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Unite the Union v Nailard in support of the conclusion that the conduct was not “related to” the Claimant’s protected characteristic.
1 The appellant is referred to in these grounds as the claimant, as she was before the tribunal.
Harassment: wrong legal test under 26(1)(b) and 26(4)
- The tribunal wrongly treated the test for under s.26(4) of the EqA 2010 as being whether the conduct complained of “amounted to harassment” (¶ 101). The correct test is whether the conduct complained of had the effect prescribed in s.26(1)(b), having regard to the matters enumerated at s.26(4).
- The tribunal compounded its error by mis-stating the test differently at ¶104 as being whether it was reasonable for the conduct complained of to have had the effect claimed, given the claimant’s perception and all the surrounding circumstances; whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have had that effect is only one of the three matters that must be taken into account in determining whether it did have the requisite effect. (¶¶101, 104, 105,106 and 110). (This is not simply a question of semantics or language. At ¶107, the tribunal appears to have considered that it could only be reasonable for the claimant to feel fearful if it was realistic to conclude that the acts of the officers in applauding EE’s speech or responding negatively to the mention of Posie Parker would translate into offensive, hostile, degrading, humiliating or intimidating treatment of her.)
Misunderstanding and misapplication of Higgs v Farmor’s School
5. The tribunal erred further in applying the s.26(4) test by importing, by way of a misunderstanding of the reasoning of the Court of Appeal in Higgs, a requirement that it be qualified by the necessity to give full weight to the importance of freedom of expression. Article 10 may be engaged in relation to an employer’s decision to punish an employee’s public or private utterances or, to a more qualified extent, his or her utterances in the workplace; but it is not engaged in a decision by a police force whether or not (and if so on what terms) to invite and condone external speakers to speak at a force-sponsored event ¶105.
Refusal to make key findings of fact
6. The tribunal refused (at ¶¶82, 107, 108) to engage with the claimant’s contention, relevant to proof of both direct discrimination and harassment and a legitimate way of establishing the “something more” than just a difference in status and a difference in treatment2, that the
2 per Madarassy v Nomura International [2007] ICR 867
respondent had adopted an institutional position in favour of gender identity theory (GI theory) and hostile to her protected “gender-critical” belief.
7. In consequence of the preceding error, the tribunal’s finding that the claimant had made “broad and unwarranted assumptions” and “sweeping conclusions” (¶108) about the prevalence of hostility to gender-critical beliefs is flawed by its refusal to engage with the evidence she put forward to prove that prevalence. Had the tribunal been willing to engage with this contention, its findings at ¶113 about ACI Lockeyear’s acceptance that at the relevant time there was a lack of understanding of the implications of Forstater, there was an imbalance, and “people will be working through their views and attitudes”, reinforced by the findings of DCS Smith’s review of the Trans Day of Visibility event, must necessarily have led it to conclude that the claimant’s contention was made out.
Inadequte reasoning (Meek)
8. The tribunal erred in refusing without explanation to engage with the claimant’s arguments about hypothetical comparators (¶¶69, 105, 117).
Misapplication of the burden of proof
- Having found in relation to the claimant’s complaint of direct discrimination that the burden of proof had passed to the respondent under s.136 EqA to prove that the actions complained of had been in no way tainted by discrimination, the tribunal erred in dismissing the claim on the basis of an absence of positive evidence of discrimination: ¶¶111-118, and in particular ¶116.
- Having found that the burden of proof passed to the respondent, the tribunal erred in excluding the possibility of subconscious discriminatory motivation on the part of the decision-maker(s) (which was inherently part of the Claimant’s case of ‘institutional bias’ against gender critical belief) without hearing evidence from them. This decision was purely based on the contemporaneous documents recording the decisions in question, which were not in principle capable of disproving subconscious motivation.
____________________
ORDERS SOUGHT
_____________________
The Appeal Tribunal is respectfully asked to allow the appeal, set aside the tribunal’s judgment, and:
a. Substitute a finding that the Claimant’s claim of direct discrimination is made out; and/or
b. Substitute a finding that the Claimant had been subjected to harassment based on her beliefs;
c. Failing either of which, in the alternative, to remit the harassment claim and/or the direct discrimination claim to a differently constituted tribunal for re-hearing.
Naomi Cunningham
William Young
OUTER TEMPLE CHAMBERS
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