You might think the last place to harbour unlawful discrimination would be a barristers’ chambers that prides itself on “defending human rights and upholding the rule of law”. But the employment tribunal last week found that Garden Court Chambers discriminated against and victimised its tenant Allison Bailey on account of her “gender critical” beliefs.
It is the second such finding of discrimination by the courts in a month, after they ruled that Maya Forstater was denied work by the thinktank CGD Europe because she articulated her belief in the scientific reality that someone’s biological sex is real and immutable. Like Forstater, Bailey disagrees with campaigners such as the charity Stonewall that someone’s self-identified “gender identity” should override their sex and argues that women have the right to access female-only sports, prisons, refuges and changing rooms. Garden Court announced that it was investigating her social media activity, including a tweet robustly criticising Stonewall for championing gender ideology and another calling out the coercive concept of the “cotton ceiling”, a reference to lesbians’ knickers in the context of the absurd view that lesbians who exclude males who identify as women from their dating pool are transphobic.
