Writing in NLJ recently, Oscar Davies, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers, said that the law was ‘tying itself in knots over gender critical cases’ (see ‘Gender critical cases: making bad law?’, NLJ, 26 April 2024). In fact, since 2021, when the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) ruled that gender critical beliefs were ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’, tribunals have drawn a series of straight lines between discriminatory conduct and employer liability.
The first organisation to be found liable for gender critical discrimination was Garden Court itself. In July 2022, an employment tribunal ruled that Garden Court had discriminated against one of its barristers, Allison Bailey, in its response to people complaining about her view that people cannot change their biological sex. The tribunal found that Garden Court had discriminated against Bailey, and victimised her, in publicly stating that she was under investigation and in upholding the complaint.
