Mr J Orwin v East Riding of Yorkshire Council: 6000146/2022
The employee in this case added the words, “XYchromosomeGuy/AdultHumanMale” next to his email signature in response to the Council’s invitation to employees to add pronouns to their signature. The Council asked him to remove it and, when he refused, he was dismissed. The employee argued that the dismissal was discriminatory because his acts constituted a manifestation or expression of his belief that a person’s gender is biological and cannot be changed. The employee’s claim failed. The Employment Tribunal held that there was not a sufficient link between his belief and the words added to his email signature. The Employment Tribunal found that his amended email signature was a deliberately provocative act to mock the idea of gender self-identification rather than an expression of his beliefs.
You can see the full judgment here.
