While working at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), Roz Adams raised concerns about how the centre dealt with issues related to gender identity.
This led to a 10-month disciplinary investigation, which the tribunal found was “clearly motivated by a strong belief amongst the senior management and some of the claimant’s colleagues that the claimant’s views were inherently hateful”.
Rhys Wyborn, employment partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, told HR magazine that this case showed employers’ legal obligation to respect different beliefs.
He said: “This is another case that reaffirms the vital importance of balancing different beliefs in the workplace for employers.
"Employers must approach such issues sensitively and fairly and ensure that their processes are not unfairly tainted by their own beliefs or bias that favours one set of beliefs over another."
Read more: Tax expert awarded £100k in trans tweets tribunal
Adams started working at ERCC in December 2020. The tribunal heard that before starting the job Adams was excited and supportive of the centre’s trans inclusion policy.
But when she started working at ERCC, Adams noted the centre’s approach to discussing gender identity was “off”.
The tribunal reported that Adams described herself as "sex realist", which meant she believed gender identity was not in all circumstances more important to sex.
She believed that biological sex was particularly relevant in relation to sexual violence due to some survivors not wishing to speak to a biological man when seeking support.
This was relevant as ERCC presented itself as providing support by women for women who were survivors of sexual violence.
The tribunal heard that Adams believed service users of ERCC should be given a choice as to whether they engaged with biologically female or male support workers, which she repeatedly raised with managers.
She noted that the centre had an “eggshelly” approach to discussing this issue.
Adams claimed at the tribunal that people who wrote to ERCC and questioned the gender identity of its employees were named as bigots or transphobes among colleagues, and their emails were directed to a folder labelled ‘Hate mail’.
In March 2022, a non-binary support worker (referred to as AB by the tribunal), who had previously used a name typically associated with women, emailed colleagues to request to be referred to as a new name that was more typically read as male.
Adams raised concerns with her line manager that this could exclude some service users.
While monitoring the ERCC email inbox, Adams received an email from a service user who was worried they had been appointed to AB as their name sounded male and they would not be comfortable speaking to a man. Adams responded in a way that exposed the gender and biological sex of AB.
Her line manager subsequently raised Adams’ response as unacceptable, as she had shared the private information of a colleague. Adams apologised and said she understood why the issue had been raised and that she would no longer share colleagues’ personal information with service users.
On 29 June 2022, Adams was invited to an investigation meeting to be held on 6 July. Adams told the tribunal that she was confused as she thought the problem had been resolved.
The investigation then commenced across multiple meetings for 10 months.
During the process, allegations were made that Adams had made “transphobic” comments, some of which she denied and others that she felt were misrepresentative of her views.
On 23 September 2022, Adams was signed off work with stress by her GP. Following a grievance meeting on 20 November, Adams’ union representative suggested she should be suspended on full pay until the investigative process was completed.
ERCC agreed to extend her sick pay by four weeks but did not extend it further, though Adams remained off work.
In February 2023, it was decided that Adams did not follow the management instruction about how to respond to service users and public queries about staff members’ private information, and that she engaged in behaviour that was likely to cause distress to a colleague or colleagues.
Although no action was taken against Adams, she did not feel safe to return to work and resigned.
The tribunal found that the ERCC had discriminated against Adams on the basis of her belief as “she did not fully subscribe to the gender ideology which they did and which they wished to promote in the organisation”.
The tribunal referred to the ERCC investigation as a “heresy hunt” and “deeply flawed”.
It ruled that ERCC launched the investigative process to make clear to Adams that they believed her "gender-critical beliefs equated to transphobia and were unacceptable". The tribunal stated that it was clear ERCC criticised Adams for her beliefs.
The report stated that "this is one of these cases where sex does matter in that the respondents are a Rape Crisis Centre" and there was an occupational requirement for employees to be women.
Read more: Gender-critical teacher loses unfair dismissal claim in pronouns tribunal
Helen Watson, partner and head of employment at Aaron and Partners, told HR magazine that employers should be careful not to discriminate against employees who hold gender-critical beliefs.
She said: “Employers must recognise that some gender-critical beliefs are protected by the Equality Act.
“Therefore, employers must ensure that they do not discriminate by harassing, dismissing or generally treating employees with these beliefs less favourably than those who do not hold such beliefs.”
Watson added that HR should offer training to ensure that employees understand how to prevent claims of discrimination.
She continued: “Employers should have suitable policies and procedures in place, such as anti-bullying and harassment policies and equality and diversity policies.
“Training on these policies and procedures must be provided and employers should ensure they have robust management structures, to understand and deal with these issues appropriately and effectively.”
Rape Crisis Scotland has commissioned an independent review into practices at ERCC.
Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said: “We believe that it is important that survivors can make informed choices about the services they can access at rape crisis centres.
"We know it is important for some survivors to have a choice over the sex or gender of their worker.”
