The Supreme Court of the U.K. on Monday (June 9) refused a school’s attempt to appeal a Court of Appeal decision favoring a Christian employee fired for social media posts opposing LGBTQ+ materials in class.
The decision ends a seven-year legal battle for Kristie Higgs’ religious rights.
Higgs, a 48-year-old Christian mother of two, worked for seven years as a student counseling assistant at Farmor’s School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, before her dismissal in 2019. She won a U.K. Court of Appeal on Feb. 12 after her employer fired her for expressing concern on Facebook about LGBTQ+ ideology taught at her son’s Church of England primary school.
At the time, Lord Justice Underhill, Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Falk at the Court of Appeal reversed an earlier employment tribunal ruling defending the school’s dismissal of Higgs.
Supreme Court judges Lord Reed, Lord Hamblen and Lady Simler refused to hear the school’s appeal, according to a Christian Legal Centre (CLC) press statement.
“I am relieved and grateful to the Supreme Court for this common-sense decision,” Higgs said. “Christians have the right to express their beliefs on social media and at other non-work-related settings without fear of being punished by their employer.”
Higgs highlighted that expressing biblical truth should not be considered “discriminatory” but “an expression of love and of light.”
“Today’s judgment is as important for free speech as it is for freedom of religion,” she added.
Employers will no longer be able to rely on their theoretical fears of reputational damage or subjective concerns about causing offense in order to discipline employees for exercising their fundamental freedom to express their deeply held beliefs, she said.
“The Court of Appeal has now set a clear standard to protect people like me, and the countless other Christians in this nation, to express their beliefs without fear of losing their jobs,” Higgs said.
The Christian Legal Centre has supported Higgs since 2018 and called the Supreme Court’s refusal a “landmark victory for religious freedom and freedom of speech in the workplace” in a case that had “significant implications for Christians and indeed all individuals of faith in the United Kingdom.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said the Supreme Court’s decision meant a “decisive closure to this extraordinary case.”
“The Court of Appeal ruling, now unequivocally upheld, powerfully demonstrated that the foundational Christian principles of free speech and religious liberty are not yet extinguished from English law,” said Williams.
The resolution of Higgs’ case establishes a critical legal precedent that will resonate for many years to come, protecting the right to express Christian beliefs without fear of reprisal, she said.
“The Court of Appeal confirmed, loud and clear, that ideological censorship in the workplace, particularly against sincerely held Christian convictions, is illegal,” Williams said.
The Court of Appeal ruling in February confirmed that the Equality Act protects traditional Christian beliefs on social issues, such as opposition to the ideas of transgenderism and “gender-fluidity” and opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the CLC.
“The authoritative judgment re-shapes the law on freedom of religion in the workplace,” the CLC stated at that time. “For the first time in employment law, the judgment has effectively established a legal presumption that any dismissal for an expression or manifestation of Christian faith is illegal.”
The Court of Appeal judgment explained that the burden is on the employer to prove in the Employment Tribunal that any such dismissal can be objectively justified – not just that administrators believed it was justified – and was prescribed by law, proportionate and otherwise necessary in a democratic society to address a pressing social need, according to the CLC.
Furthermore, the Court of Appeal ruled that Higgs’ dismissal was legal only if “objectively justified as prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society,” the CLC stated.
The school argued that Higgs had been fired for language used in her social posts, not because of her Christian beliefs. The judges in the ruling, however, called the sacking “unquestionably a disproportionate response,” and that “even if the language of the re-posts passes the threshold of objectionability, it is not grossly offensive.”
“There was no evidence that the reputation of the school had thus far been damaged: its concern was about potential damage in the future,” stated the judges.
There was no possibility that, even if readers of the posts associated the claimant with the school, they would believe that they represented school views, they ruled.
“Any reputational damage would only take the form of the fear expressed by the complainant, namely that the claimant might express at work the homophobic and transphobic attitudes arguably implicit in the language used,” the ruling stated.
The judges accepted that if such beliefs “became widespread” it could harm the school’s reputation in the community. Yet the risk of such a “widespread circulation” was deemed “speculative at best.”
“The posts were made on her personal Facebook account, in her maiden name and with no reference to the school,” the judges stated. “By the time of the hearing, several weeks after the posts were made, only one person was known to have recognized who she was.”
The judges accepted Higgs’ assertion that she did not treat gay or trans pupils differently and noted no complaints about her work.
“Taking those reasons together,” the judges stated, “[We] do not believe that dismissal was even arguably a proportionate sanction for the claimant’s conduct. It was no doubt unwise of her to re-post material expressed in florid and provocative language with which she did not agree, and in circumstances where people were liable to realize her connection with the school. But [we] cannot accept that that can justify her dismissal, and still less so where she was a long-serving employee against whose actual work there was no complaint of any kind.”
The court overturned an earlier employment appeal tribunal decision to cancel the case for a retrial, adding, “We should ourselves hold that the claimant’s dismissal constituted unlawful discrimination on the ground of religion and belief.”
After the Court of Appeal ruling in February, Higgs issued a statement recalling how she shared private Facebook posts in October 2018 raising awareness of gender ideology taught to young children in primary schools.
“Because of those posts, I lost my job. Today, after nearly seven years, the Court of Appeal has finally put that right,” Higgs said, at the time. “Expressing biblical Christian teaching on gender and sexuality may appear to be offensive to those who hold the opposite views, but as today’s judgment signals, Christians have a right to express their beliefs publicly. This is not just about me. Too many Christians have suffered discipline or marginalization at their work because of their Christian faith.”
Higgs shared and posted the disputed messages on her personal Facebook page after receiving an invitation on Oct. 5, 2018 from the Church of England primary school that her younger son attended.
Entitled, “Teaching the Equality Act in Schools,” the invitation read, “This year we are using several story books to help our school community promote diversity and celebrate difference. Children will become very familiar with the phrase, ‘No Outsiders in Our School,’ as they work through the story books.”
The letter stated that the program “is in line with the Equality Act 2010” and invited parents to see the books and lesson plans at a school event. Higgs said only she, another parent and a grandparent attended the viewing.
She saw books such as “Jacob’s New Dress” by Sarah Hoffman, about a boy who likes to wear dresses, and “Red: A Crayon’s Story” by Michael Hall, about a blue crayon suffering an identity crisis because it is not red.
“To me it didn’t seem to be that it was just about anti-bullying,” Higgs said in a Christian Concern video in 2024. “There seemed to be something more underlying, with the Jacob’s New Dress and Red Crayon books, how children could choose their own gender. I thought it was very confusing for my child because of our Christian beliefs.”
Concerned that most parents were unaware of the gender identity books promoted by the school, Higgs posted on her Facebook page, under her maiden name, a message about the “No Outsiders” invitation. She also shared another post on a petition against introducing LGBTQ+ “Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)” in schools.
She uploaded the Citizens Go petition link on Oct. 24, 2018, which was headlined, “Uphold the right of parents to have children educated in line with their religious beliefs. Stop supporting LGBT indoctrination.” The petition was directed to then-U.K. Education Secretary Damian Hind.
Higgs posted on Oct. 27, 2018, “This is happening in our primary schools now!” and provided a link to an article with the headline, “Jacob’s New Dress and Red: Crayon’s Story Give ‘Toni the Tampon’ a Run for Its Money.”
In the video interview with Christian Concern, Higgs said she thought that “was the end of it,” but an anonymous parent complained to the headteacher about the posts, saying they were homophobic and offensive. Higgs was summoned to a meeting with the headteacher and a Human Relations staff member at the school.
“They thought the posts I was sharing were homophobic and very negative, [saying], ‘Did you realize other parents would see these?’” recalled Higgs. “And so I just thought I suppose it’s on Facebook, and I supposed people would see them, but I didn’t really think I did anything wrong.”
She said she was confused about why the school officials then sent her home.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I just shared some information with other parents about what the government is planning and a critique article, and a couple of books that are being read,” Higgs said. “I came home and cried because I was in shock, and I still didn’t think I did anything wrong.”
The secondary school suspended her pending an investigation, and she endured a disciplinary hearing for six hours on Dec. 19, 2018. She received a letter on Jan. 7, 2019 firing her without warning for “gross misconduct.”
An employment tribunal on April 15, 2019 ruled against her claim of unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. She successfully appealed at an employment appeal tribunal in June of last year, but a judge ordered the case to be heard again by the original court that had rejected her claim.
As Higgs’ lawyers successfully appealed the order, the case then proceeded to the U.K. Court of Appeal in February, which ruled in favor of the school worker.
The long legal battle has seen a number of “unprecedented obstacles,” according to the CLC. An appeal by Higgs was postponed in July 2022 after a lay member on the presiding panel, Edward Lord, was revealed to be a trans activist.
Following that, in March 2023 it was reported that Andrew Morris, former Assistant General Secretary of National Education Union (NEU), would be presiding as a lay member in a rescheduled appeal hearing after Lord’s recusal. He led the NEU at a time when the educational body “took a strong position in favor of making both relationship and sex education mandatory in primary schools,” as reported by the CLC. “The NEU at this time was also a national leader in encouraging teaching children at primary schools about same-sex relationships and transgenderism.”
A fresh revelation, as reported by the CLC, has now found that Higgs’ original employment tribunal hearing in September 2020 included an LGBT advocate. Debbie England, a human rights specialist, is an advocate for influential gay rights charity Stonewall.
A presentation by Sums Consulting for Higher Education, called “Recruiting the Right Team” features England and says: “Debbie led UWE’s [University of West of England in Bristol] equality and diversity team, during her tenure UWE achieved highest Higher Education Sector ranking in Stonewall index and Athena Swan accreditation at both University wide and departmental levels.”
From 2013 to 2022, England also advised Common Purpose, a non-profit organization promoting equality and diversity and the advancement of the LGBTQI+ community, with promotional “about us” videos that include the Pride flag.
If known at the time, a recusal application would have been highly likely, according to the CLC.
