Teacher Faces Remortgaging Home After School Sacked Her Over Trans Row
A teacher faces having to remortgage her home to cover legal costs after losing a dispute over a transgender pupil. The woman, who cannot be named as a result of a court order, was suspended by a primary school after she refused to use a student’s preferred pronouns and name.
The pupil, who was born female, had been placed in her year 4 class and used male pronouns and had a male name. After arguing that it could be harmful to encourage the child’s belief that they were ‘in the wrong body’, the teacher was sacked last year when she continued to challenge the school’s policies.
The High Court rejected the teacher’s application for a judicial review and ordered her to pay the council’s £14,000 legal costs, according to sources. The court ruled that she lacked ‘standing’ to challenge safeguarding failures. It also noted that the school had moved the child to a different class in response to raising a safeguarding concern.
Now, Nottinghamshire County Council say she is not ‘impecunious’ and that she owns a four-bedroom property. Council lawyers say that a charge could be placed on the home to settle the costs.
Speaking to sources, the teacher, referred to as ‘Hannah’, said: ‘Teachers are being bullied not to question trans-affirming policies when evidence shows that the actual result of the approach is to put the welfare of children at serious risk.’
The Christian Legal Centre, which is representing the teacher, said she has launched a tribunal claim against the school for allegedly victimising her for whistleblowing, unfair dismissal and religious discrimination. The tribunal is expected to hear the claim in August 2024.
At the time of her bid for a judicial review, the teacher told The Sunday Times that ‘children are being experimented on’, adding: ‘Schools are silencing teachers who disagree with the policy of simply accepting that if parents ask for a child to be treated as the opposite sex, they must go along with that.’
When the High Court rejected the application last month, the reasons cited for stopping the case from going ahead included the teacher lacking ‘standing’ to challenge safeguarding failures in relation to an individual child at the school.
It emerged yesterday that lawyers for the council have told the teacher that it would be lawful to ‘enforce’ the costs immediately and have put forward the proposal that she could remortgage the house she shares with her husband.
Lawyers for the teacher argued that she has been left impoverished by being sacked. They also argued that enforcing an order on legal costs would be unlawful under whistleblowing legislation before an employment tribunal rules on her case.
