In these days of fevered and angry social media comment on almost everything, it is always wise for HR to keep its feet anchored firmly on the ground when all that online bile and indignation washes up at the employer’s door. Here to help with that is this week’s Court of Appeal decision in Higgs – v – Farmors School & Others, a case bulging at the seams with KCs (five!) and abstruse legal analysis.
In brief, Ms Higgs worked as an administrator for the School. She was dismissed after expressing on Facebook what a member of the public described as “homophobic and prejudiced views” concerning purported government policy on teaching same-sex relationships and gender identification matters in schools. Farmors was concerned that readers of the posts would conclude that Higgs held homophobic and transphobic views incompatible with her role there, and that this would put its reputation at risk. However, it did not suggest that Higgs had in fact ever brought those views into her work or had allowed them to affect her treatment of any of her colleagues or pupils.
The views which led to Higgs’ posts – a lack of belief in gender fluidity or that someone can change their biological sex, an Old Testament assertion that “divinely-instituted” marriage could be between opposite sexes only and a perceived duty, when unbiblical ideas or ideologies were promoted, to “witness to the world” her own views of “biblical truth – were accepted at the outset as protected under the Equality Act....
Akon made headlines last week over claims that his Akon City project had been abandoned by the Senegalese government. Speaking with Philadelphia media personality Mina Saywhat on the Minas' House ...