Sandie Peggie's lawyer: Gender-critical staff are taking a stand
Peggie claims she faced discrimination and harassment as a result of being forced to share changing rooms with Upton, who is biologically male but identifies as female.Her barrister spoke out as an army veteran, David Toshack, launched a similar action.
He was sacked by GEOAmey for expressing gender-critical views during training, days before he was due to start work as a prison custody officer at Kirkcaldy sheriff court.
Cunningham said: 'There's a real sense of matters coming to a head over the [Supreme Court] judgment because people with gender-critical views didn't know until that point that their beliefs aligned pretty clearly with the law and that a so-called transwoman is a man.'I think it's given a lot of people courage to stand up for what they believed in all along. It's a bit of a paradigm shift.'Employers have been acting as if it's unacceptable that employees refer to a trans-identifying man as a man. It is now beyond clear that it is not. Employers are taking quite a lot of time catching up with that.'Employers are still saying that's not acceptable, that's heresy, that's something that you're not allowed to say.'I think there will be a lot more tribunals. They can't push women around on this any more. It's OK to say that a man's a man.'
During a safeguarding workshop in January, Toshack, 50, said he would not use female pronouns to address transgender inmates who were biologically male.When he expressed his belief a man cannot become a woman, he was told his views were against the law and GEOAmey's company policy, and told to leave the room.The father of three was fired that day. He is taking GEOAmey to an employment tribunal this year for unlawful discrimination and harassment for his beliefs.Toshack said he was determined to challenge his dismissal in court despite lacking the financial and cultural influence of high-profile gender-critical campaigners.He told the Scottish Daily Mail: 'There must be loads of folk like me who don't have any of that, who are on their own, so I want to show folk you can stand up against this stuff.'
Campaigners said the latest dispute over pronouns in the workplace and legal settings will pile further pressure on Scottish employers and public bodies to review their equalities guidance after the Supreme Court ruling in April.Dr Kath Murray, a criminology researcher at the think tank Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, said: 'Around 95 per cent of prisoners are men, and male offenders have a very different risk profile to women. Requiring prison officers to refer to male offenders as women shows how far an organisation whose core business is managing risk related to sex has lost sight of material reality.'Failing to understand that employees are protected on the basis of both 'gender-critical' and religious belief means that more and more employers are ending up in employment tribunals.'
Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland, which won the Supreme Court challenge, said: 'Sadly, the fact that workers are still forced to seek redress at tribunals for expressing perfectly legal opinions shows that there is a huge body of work to be done reviewing and revising guidance.'We have repeatedly urged the Scottish government to withdraw all unlawful guidance as a matter of urgency and tell public bodies and those funded with public money to do likewise.
'The longer they sit on their hands, the more cases will come to court.'A GEOAmey representative said: 'As this matter will be subject to tribunal proceedings, it would not be appropriate to comment at this time.'
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