College employee Kristie Higgs sacked for LGBT+ posts wins enchantment

A Christian faculty employee sacked after sharing posts about LGBT+ relationships educating in class has gained a Courtroom of Attraction fight.

Kristie Higgs misplaced her position as a pastoral administrator and paintings revel in supervisor at Farmor’s College in Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 2019.

She had challenged in 2023 an employment enchantment tribunal judgement, which dominated in her favour however despatched the case again to any other tribunal for a recent determination on whether or not her dismissal used to be lawful – a step her attorneys described as “needless”.

Within the judgement revealed on Wednesday, 3 judges dominated in her favour and located the verdict to take the case again to an employment tribunals used to be “unlawfully discriminatory”.

In October 2018, Mrs Higgs shared two posts to Fb to about 100 buddies below her maiden identify, one among which referred to “brainwashing our kids”.

Any other referred to “suppressing Christianity and taking away it from the general public enviornment”.

The posts referred to LGBT+ (lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender) educating at her son’s Church of England number one faculty, moderately than on the faculty she labored at.

Within the ruling passed down previous, Lord Justice Underhill, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Girl Justice Falk, stated Ms Higgs had posted messages “most commonly quoted from different assets, objecting to executive coverage on intercourse schooling in number one faculties on account of its promotion of ‘gender fluidity’ and its equation of same-sex marriage with marriage between a person and a lady”.

The ruling stated it used to be no longer disputed that Mrs Higgs’ ideals that gender is binary and same-sex marriage can’t be equated to marriage between a person and a lady had been safe through the Equality Act.

The varsity had disregarded Mrs Higgs for gross misconduct, at the foundation that her posts had been at risk of injury the varsity’s popularity.

Of their ruling, the judges stated neither the language of Mrs Higgs’ posts or the chance of reputational injury to the varsity had been in a position to justifying her dismissal when she “had no longer stated the rest of the type at paintings or displayed any discriminatory attitudes in her remedy of pupils”.

Talking outdoor courtroom, Mrs Higgs stated: “I pray that these days will end up to be a landmark day for Christian freedoms and unfastened speech.

“Christians have the proper to specific their ideals on social media and at different non-work-related settings with out concern of being punished through their employer.”

Sean Jones KC, for the varsity, advised the courtroom in a written submission that remitting the case used to be “the right path”, including Mrs Higgs “used to be no longer disregarded for manifesting (her ideals) however since the method through which it used to be manifested may quite have brought about and did purpose others to assume she used to be expressing homophobic or transphobic perspectives”.