Excellent, I look forward to the dire melodrama from the TA brigade! But I thought this had been fought and won months ago, am I thinking of someone else?
First and foremost, this must be such a relief to Maya. She’s done so much and doesn’t deserve to have this hanging over her. Second, and I’m very much not a lawyer, there seems to be much in this ruling that will be of use in similar cases in the future. For example, there are specific examples of perfectly reasonable and true things that Maya said which have been judged as not grounds for dismissal, in her case. I’ve no real idea how universally this can be applied.
Its decision comes after Forstater successfully brought a test case to establish that gender-critical views are a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act. She initially lost that case at an employment tribunal in 2019 but won on appeal last year. The case was then sent back to the tribunal to decide whether her claim had been proved on the facts.
• In 2019, Maya lost her case in a UK Employment Tribunal (ET). The key point was that Judge James Tayler ruled that her case failed the fifth Grainger Criterion (“Grainger V”) of being “worthy of respect in a democratic society” (WORIADS).
• In 2021, Maya won her appeal in the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). The key point was that Justice Akhlaq Choudhury ruled that her case passed Grainger V (WORIADS). The EAT is a superior court, where her win set a binding or mandatory legal precedent on lower court ET cases.
• Today, Maya won her case that “was then sent back” to the ET level (as Ophelia quoted above in #8), where Judge Andrew Glennie applied the binding precedent from the EAT level.
To my amateur knowledge, Maya’s ET win today is not a binding precedent on other ET cases. It might be a weaker type of precedent that could be cited as a reference in other ET cases. But in any case, as latsot wrote above in #6, Maya’s ET win today does contain “specific examples of perfectly reasonable and true things that Maya said which have been judged as not grounds for dismissal, in her case.” So her ET win today puts HR departments and managers on notice of examples they can expect to be consistent with her EAT level binding precedent.
Thank you, Ophelia and Holms, for your appreciation. I spent about 8 hours to write my comment #9 (sparked by Facebook comments early that day, then drafted more toward this site). I succeeded in posting my comment #9 here to celebrate Maya’s win on her big day. I can explain how my comment #9 works, and maybe partly explain how it took me 8 hours to iron this out.
The UK has one Employment Appeal Tribunal (always capitalized), abbreviated as EAT (with one President, Justice Akhlaq Choudhury). But Ophelia’s blockquote above in #8 is an example that Maya’s case “was sent back to the tribunal” (lower case) to mean a lower court. So to learn how the UK system works, you need to spot the difference between Maya’s 2021 win in the UK upper court/case “Tribunal” and her 2022 win in a lower court/case “tribunal”. This is hard to spot and learn.
So my comment #9 invented a notation of capitalizing Employment Tribunal and ET, so my 3 bullet points in #9 have a parallel structure between ET and EAT. But I have never seen anyone write ET (upper or lower case). So my capitalized abbreviation ET is only for my comment #9. But it helps you see the court levels. The chef’s kiss is latsot’s comma (“, in her case.”). His comma really gets how the upper and lower courts fit together.
That’s excellent news!
Very worthy of respect indeed!
Good to hear! Free speech wins.
And truth wins.
/ breaths sigh of relief
Excellent, I look forward to the dire melodrama from the TA brigade! But I thought this had been fought and won months ago, am I thinking of someone else?
First and foremost, this must be such a relief to Maya. She’s done so much and doesn’t deserve to have this hanging over her. Second, and I’m very much not a lawyer, there seems to be much in this ruling that will be of use in similar cases in the future. For example, there are specific examples of perfectly reasonable and true things that Maya said which have been judged as not grounds for dismissal, in her case. I’ve no real idea how universally this can be applied.
Holms, no, same case, but there were two parts to it.
The Guardian:
I can elaborate on the two parts as two levels:
• In 2019, Maya lost her case in a UK Employment Tribunal (ET). The key point was that Judge James Tayler ruled that her case failed the fifth Grainger Criterion (“Grainger V”) of being “worthy of respect in a democratic society” (WORIADS).
• In 2021, Maya won her appeal in the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). The key point was that Justice Akhlaq Choudhury ruled that her case passed Grainger V (WORIADS). The EAT is a superior court, where her win set a binding or mandatory legal precedent on lower court ET cases.
• Today, Maya won her case that “was then sent back” to the ET level (as Ophelia quoted above in #8), where Judge Andrew Glennie applied the binding precedent from the EAT level.
To my amateur knowledge, Maya’s ET win today is not a binding precedent on other ET cases. It might be a weaker type of precedent that could be cited as a reference in other ET cases. But in any case, as latsot wrote above in #6, Maya’s ET win today does contain “specific examples of perfectly reasonable and true things that Maya said which have been judged as not grounds for dismissal, in her case.” So her ET win today puts HR departments and managers on notice of examples they can expect to be consistent with her EAT level binding precedent.
Thanks for that Dave. Useful.
Thanks Dave, you fatten my brane.
Heh. That’s a better way of putting it.
Thank you, Ophelia and Holms, for your appreciation. I spent about 8 hours to write my comment #9 (sparked by Facebook comments early that day, then drafted more toward this site). I succeeded in posting my comment #9 here to celebrate Maya’s win on her big day. I can explain how my comment #9 works, and maybe partly explain how it took me 8 hours to iron this out.
The UK has one Employment Appeal Tribunal (always capitalized), abbreviated as EAT (with one President, Justice Akhlaq Choudhury). But Ophelia’s blockquote above in #8 is an example that Maya’s case “was sent back to the tribunal” (lower case) to mean a lower court. So to learn how the UK system works, you need to spot the difference between Maya’s 2021 win in the UK upper court/case “Tribunal” and her 2022 win in a lower court/case “tribunal”. This is hard to spot and learn.
So my comment #9 invented a notation of capitalizing Employment Tribunal and ET, so my 3 bullet points in #9 have a parallel structure between ET and EAT. But I have never seen anyone write ET (upper or lower case). So my capitalized abbreviation ET is only for my comment #9. But it helps you see the court levels. The chef’s kiss is latsot’s comma (“, in her case.”). His comma really gets how the upper and lower courts fit together.
All due respect to latsot’s comma. I doff my hat to it.