A gender-critical woman has won a harassment claim against Arts Council England, after hostile comments were made about her beliefs at an internal meeting and on a petition circulated within the organisation.
Denise Fahmy’s claim at Leeds employment tribunal related to the fallout over the London Community Fund’s (LCF) decision to award a grant drawn from an Arts Council England (ACE) fund to the gender-critical LGB Alliance. The grant was later suspended.
At a meeting in April last year to discuss the matter, ACE’s deputy chief executive, Simon Mellor, expressed the opinion that the LGB Alliance “has a history of anti-trans activity” and that it had been a mistake for the fund to make the award. Fahmy, who said 411 people attended the drop-in session, was the only attender to challenge the view that LGB Alliance was anti-transgender.
The following month an employee, identified only as SB, emailed an “allies support sheet” including a link to a petition to all staff. Among the comments entered on the sheet was one that referred to “openly discriminatory transphobic staff” and another that described LGB Alliance as “a glorified hate group that has funds and supporters that also happen to be neo-Nazis, homophobes and Islamaphobes”
SB was suspended the same day for sending the email but the petition remained up for approximately 26 hours.
In Tuesday’s written judgment, employment judge Jim Shepherd said Mellor’s comments at the meeting “opened the door, for the subsequent petition and the comments within that petition. Whether intended or not, it led to the petition. It was inappropriate for him to provide his personal views and express solidarity with one side of the debate.” He also wrote that it was “unreasonable and inappropriate for the petition to be left up for that time”.
The judge said: “The tribunal is satisfied that the email and comments were unwanted conduct, which had the purpose and effect of violating the claimant’s dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the claimant.” Mellor’s comments and actions were found not to have crossed that threshold for harassment.
Compensation will be determined at a later date but the judge said there would be uplift in the region of 10% for ACE’s refusal to provide Fahmy with the right to appeal against her complaint to the organisation.
Fahmy, who failed in two claims of victimisation, said: “I am delighted to have won my claim of harassment. It cannot be acceptable that people like me, who believe people can’t change their sex, are subjected to harassment at work. And worse still, that employers encourage and collude in this behaviour.
“People in the arts, and especially women, are facing a tide of bullying with spurious accusations of transphobia, and many are frightened to speak out as they risk public cancellation. Institutions like the Arts Council need to be held accountable when they are biased and enable harassment of gender-critical people. I hope my case has woken up leaders in the arts as to what’s going on.”
An ACE spokesperson said: “There was nothing in the judgment to support the accusation of institutional bias. We are reflecting on the judgment which upheld two allegations of harassment in relation to a petition set up by a junior member of staff who no longer works for us, and we note the tribunal’s acknowledgment of steps taken by us to disable the petition and address the incident at the time.”
