Mick Hartley

Another one not standing quietly by while she's threatened with dismissal for expressing gender critical views:

A social worker is suing her employer after she was suspended over her belief that a person “cannot change their sex”.

Rachel Meade, 53, has issued claims for harassment and sex discrimination against Social Work England and Westminster City Council, where she has worked for 20 years.

The social worker from Dartford in Kent claims she has been discriminated against because of her gender critical beliefs.

Meade was given a one-year warning by case examiners at Social Work England after the regulator received a complaint from a member of the public in 2020 about posts that she had shared or liked on Facebook.

The regulator found that Meade had “engaged in a pattern of discriminatory behaviour which persisted over an extended period” by sharing social media posts more than 70 times….

As a result of the warning, Westminster City Council suspended Meade and started a disciplinary investigation with a warning that she was at risk of being dismissed for misconduct.

Meade has launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover her legal fees.

In court documents seen by The Times, the social worker describes herself as “a feminist who holds gender critical beliefs and who has spoken out about, and campaigned over many years for, women’s rights”.

She adds that she believes that “biological sex is real, important and immutable and is not to be conflated with gender identity”, that “there are two sexes, male and female” and “that a person cannot change their sex”.

Meade contends that self-identification of gender “creates serious safeguarding issues for women and girls” with specific reference to women-only areas such as public changing rooms, lavatories, rape crisis facilities, refuges and prisons.

In her claim she argues that the posts that she shared or liked were from a range of established women’s rights groups as well as links to mainstream media articles.

Her lawyer, Shazia Khan, of Cole Khan Solicitors, said that “contrary to the Equality Act 2010 my client’s right to practise her chosen profession has been thwarted simply because she exercised her right to freedom of expression of her gender critical beliefs”.

Khan added that regulators and employers “must not act with impunity as though they are above the law. The facts of my client’s case sets a very worrying precedent — silencing and sanctioning is not the way forward”.

Gender critical views are protected under the Equality Act 2010 – as per the Maya Forstater case. Rachel Meade here is simply expressing her views – views with which the overwhelming majority of people agree, and views which also happen to be in accordance with reality and with science. No, people can't change sex.

Let's hope Social Work England and Westminster City Council get duly cut down to size in court.

More at Glinner's.