Gloucestershire school cannot take sacked woman to Supreme Court
A school cannot take its case against a teacher who shared social media posts criticising teaching about LGBT+ relationships to the Supreme Court.Kristie Higgs, a Christian mother of two, was sacked from her role at Farmor's School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 2019 for sharing Facebook posts criticising teaching about LGBT+ relationships in schools.In February, she won a Court of Appeal battle related to her dismissal, with judges finding the decision to sack her was "unquestionably a disproportionate response".The school sought to appeal against the ruling at the Supreme Court, but three justices refused to give the school the green light to challenge the decision.
In a decision on Thursday, which was published on Monday, Lord Reed, Lord Hamblen, and Lady Simler said that the school had asked for the go-ahead to appeal against the ruling on four grounds.But they said that the Supreme Court "does not have jurisdiction" to hear three of the grounds, and the fourth "does not raise an arguable question of law".In response to the decision, Mrs Higgs said: "I am relieved and grateful to the Supreme Court for this common-sense decision."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."Mrs Higgs, who worked as a pastoral administrator and work experience manager at the school, shared two posts on a private page under her maiden name in October 2018 to about 100 friends, which raised concerns about relationship education at her son's Church of England primary school.She either copied and pasted from another source or reposted the content, adding her own reference in one post to "brainwashing our children".Pupils were due to learn about the No Outsiders In Our School programme, a series of books that teach the Equality Act in primary schools.In a judgment, Lord Justice Underhill, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Falk, ruled in Mrs Higgs' favour in February, stating: "The dismissal of an employee merely because they have expressed a religious or other protected belief to which the employer, or a third party with whom it wishes to protect its reputation, objects will constitute unlawful direct discrimination within the meaning of the Equality Act."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
30 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Khan accuses Reeves of ‘levelling down London'
Sir Sadiq Khan has accused Rachel Reeves of 'levelling down' London after she refused to hand over billions for infrastructure projects. The Labour Mayor of London has been battling with the Treasury for funding to pay for the extension of the Bakerloo line and the Docklands Light Railway. He also wanted the Chancellor to give him the green light to impose a tourist tax on visitors to the capital, and to provide millions extra for the Metropolitan Police. But Ms Reeves's spending review, to be unveiled on Wednesday, is not expected to include most of Sir Sadiq's demands. A source close to the Mayor said he would continue 'battling' to get more money out of the Treasury even if he fails at the spending review. They said: 'Over the past nine years as Mayor, Sadiq has fought to deliver for London – in the best interests of Londoners and the whole country. 'We know that when London does well it means the whole country does well, and that it will simply not be possible to achieve national growth ambitions without the right investment and growth in our capital. 'We must not return to the damaging, anti-London approach of the last government, which would not only harm London's vital public services, but jobs and growth across the country.' The spokesman added: 'Sadiq will always stand up for London and has been clear it would be unacceptable if there are no major infrastructure projects for London announced in the spending review and the Met doesn't get the funding it needs… 'It's also important to recognise that parts of London still have some of the highest levels of poverty anywhere in the UK. 'Sadiq will always stand up for London and has been crystal clear that the way to level up other regions is not to level down London.' Reeves's policies A source at the Treasury pointed out that in the year since the Government came to power, Ms Reeves had come out in favour of a third runway at Heathrow and the expansion of Gatwick, Luton and City airports. The Treasury has also expanded late licencing in the capital, given approval to the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, allocated money so that HS2 will run to London Euston and provided money for free school meals. Last week, Ms Reeves announced £15 billion more to be spent on transport infrastructure outside London and the south-east, part of what was seen as a rebalancing of government priorities away from the capital Research released on Monday from IPPR North found that if the north of England had received the same per person spending as the capital in the past decade, it would have received £140 billion more – enough to build seven Elizabeth lines. Over the decade to 2022/23, each year London received £1,183 per person, while the north of England got £486 per person and the Midlands £455.
North Wales Chronicle
35 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
School loses Supreme Court bid over Christian staff member sacked for LGBT posts
Kristie Higgs, a Christian mother of two, was sacked from her role at Farmor's School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 2019 for sharing Facebook posts criticising teaching about LGBT+ relationships in schools. In February, she won a Court of Appeal battle related to her dismissal, with three senior judges finding that the decision to sack her for gross misconduct was 'unlawfully discriminatory' and 'unquestionably a disproportionate response'. The school sought to appeal against the ruling at the Supreme Court in March, but three justices refused to give the school the green light to challenge the decision in the UK's highest court. In a decision on Thursday, which was published on Monday, Lord Reed, Lord Hamblen, and Lady Simler said that the school had asked for the go-ahead to appeal against the ruling on four grounds. But they said that the Supreme Court 'does not have jurisdiction' to hear three of the grounds, and the fourth 'does not raise an arguable question of law'. In response to the decision, Mrs Higgs said: 'I am relieved and grateful to the Supreme Court for this common-sense decision. '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.' Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre – which supported Mrs Higgs' case, said: 'We welcome the Supreme Court's decision, which brings a decisive closure to this extraordinary case.' She continued: 'The Court of Appeal confirmed, loud and clear, that ideological censorship in the workplace, particularly against sincerely held Christian convictions, is illegal. 'This latest decision from the Supreme Court is further proof that our tireless work at the Christian Legal Centre, in defending so many Christian freedoms cases, has not been in vain.' Mrs Higgs, who worked as a pastoral administrator and work experience manager at the school, shared two posts on a private page under her maiden name in October 2018 to about 100 friends, which raised concerns about relationship education at her son's Church of England primary school. She either copied and pasted from another source or reposted the content, adding her own reference in one post to 'brainwashing our children'. BREAKING: The Supreme Court has today refused to hear the appeal of Farmor's School in Fairford, Gloucestershire of the landmark Kristie Higgs Court of Appeal ruling. In February 2025, in a seminal judgment for Christian freedom and free speech, the Court of Appeal had reversed… — Christian Concern (@CConcern) June 9, 2025 Pupils were to learn about the No Outsiders In Our School programme, a series of books that teach the Equality Act in primary schools. An employment tribunal found in 2020 that while Mrs Higgs' religion was a protected characteristic, her dismissal was lawful, but this decision was overturned by an Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in 2023. But the EAT ruled the case should be sent back to an employment tribunal for a fresh decision, which Mrs Higgs' lawyers challenged in the Court of Appeal as 'unnecessary'. In a judgment, Lord Justice Underhill, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Falk, ruled in Mrs Higgs' favour in February, stating: 'The dismissal of an employee merely because they have expressed a religious or other protected belief to which the employer, or a third party with whom it wishes to protect its reputation, objects will constitute unlawful direct discrimination within the meaning of the Equality Act.'
Telegraph
44 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Mark my words, we're headed for a monster debt crisis
All things fall apart. Orders, whether domestic or geopolitical, eventually collapse. So too do monetary cycles, typically rising and falling every 80 years or so. The big cycle that began in 1945 is coming to a close as the bond markets begin to crack. Bookmark this piece: a debt crisis is coming. Let me explain what's happening. The yield on government debt is the measure of how much interest people expect to receive to lend the government money. This goes up when the market loses confidence in the government's economic plans or think the Chancellor is going to borrow plenty more. We saw yields shoot up under Liz Truss. But after Rachel Reeves's budget, yields on the UK's 30 year bonds peaked at 5.58 per cent, up from the previous 4.99 per cent peak on the worst day of the mini-budget fallout. More worryingly, the term premium, which is the part of the yield which prices the additional risk that borrowers are taking by holding the Government's long-term debt, has risen far more sharply in the UK than in America, Germany and many other developed countries. If Reeves thought Liz Truss crashed the economy, how would she describe her own failure? The markets have concluded that Reeves's plans to stimulate growth are thin – indeed, fatally contradicted by her jobs and investment destroying tax rises – meaning she will inevitably turn to yet more borrowing to fund huge spending splurges. Borrowing for the year 2024-25 was forecast to be £87 billion in Jeremy Hunt's budget of March 2024, but over this financial year Reeves's Treasury has spent £152 billion more than it received in revenue. To put this in context, in 1976 when the UK was bailed out by the IMF the national debt to GDP ratio was running at 50 per cent. Now it is around 100 per cent – and unfunded public sector pensions take it to over 200 per cent of GDP. That's before you include huge, unquantified liabilities currently swept under the carpet, like nationalising the rail and steel industries. Some will paint my warnings as fearmongering: haven't we been in worse straits before? After WW2, UK government debt peaked at around 270 per cent of GDP and dropped steadily to 50 per cent over 30 years. The truth is that we are now uncomfortably close to that level of debt, but unlike those post-war decades we have no growth to manage our way out of it. The financial repression that was possible post-war required capital controls and fixed exchange rates under Bretton Woods. Today, aggressive measures of this kind would only lead to capital flight, currency depreciation and all manner of other knock-on effects. How might this crisis unfold? Typically in a bond market crisis the most indebted countries are targeted first by bond vigilantes who sell their bonds, force their prices down and the premium up. Buyers of newly issued bonds dry up, demanding ever higher yields. The UK is exposed and the markets sense it. The US has certain advantages as the world's reserve currency, but even it is heading for trouble. In Washington, the latest debt fuelled spending spree has attracted fierce criticism from the likes of Elon Musk. If passed it would set the US on a path to record debt. Even the world's biggest economy cannot be immune from the laws of fiscal gravity forever. So worried are some in Trump's circle that in the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord and elsewhere, Scott Bessent, now Secretary of the Treasury, and others considered how the US could reduce debt by devaluing the dollar, and even renegotiating debt to force down its liabilities. The backdrop to this is a highly unstable geopolitical world. A quarter of our debt is foreign held. China and other adversaries hold many of the cards. Not that there are friends when it comes to the markets making decisions. As Truss discovered, when there is a loss of confidence in a government's ability to service debt, markets ruthlessly intrude upon democratic government. They effectively dictated the reversal of almost all measures in the mini-budget and removed a Prime Minister. A future debt crisis would see the markets demand spending cuts of a magnitude and scale we've never known before. They will despatch Reeves back to her old job in customer relations in no time. The woman who once preposterously posed as the Iron Chancellor is now seen by the markets as a spendthrift with no growth plan – and unable to resist the unaffordable demands of her backbenchers. Egged on by Nigel Farage, she wants to fork out billions more on benefits by lifting the two-child cap. The economic growth needed to fund this debt boom is not materialising – she is funnelling money to the public sector and crushing the private sector, the engine of growth. Industrial energy prices are now the highest of any developed country, decimating the ceramic, petrochemical, glass and car industries. If Reeves can't persuade the markets she has a plan, and quickly, yields could rise even higher. She is dancing on the edge of a precipice. Of course, the roots of the present challenge go back some way. Covid lockdowns and the money printing that paid for them cast a long shadow. Unlike many who cheered the opening of the spending taps, I warned in Cabinet of the inflationary impacts and sought to run a tight ship in my department. Even before the pandemic hit, the Bank of England's QE had created the illusion that deficits could be financed without end, and that hard trade offs could be avoided. That was fantasy economics. The UK will hit the rocks if we don't change course. There is too much debt because there is too much spending. Labour may try and offset that with more taxation, but they can't do that without crushing growth altogether. If you thought you knew the depth of anger and resignation about the mismanagement of the country, you haven't seen anything yet.
