A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women could not change their biological sex has been awarded more than £100,000 in compensation by an employment tribunal.
It comes after an earlier tribunal ruled that Maya Forstater, 49, was unfairly discriminated against because of her gender-critical beliefs when she did not have her contract or fellowship renewed by the Centre for Global Development (CGD), where she was a visiting fellow.
The tax expert said she felt vindicated by the decision and claimed it was a warning to other organisations.
“My case has exposed institutionalised discrimination against, and the routine abuse and smearing of, people with perfectly ordinary beliefs about the material reality of sex,” she said.
“A bigot is someone who is prejudiced or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group. I, and many other people with gender-critical beliefs, have been the victims, not the perpetrators, of discrimination fuelled by bigotry.”
Her tweets, examined in the earlier tribunal, included one in which she wrote: “A man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality.” She also compared self-identifying trans women to Rachel Dolezal, a white American woman who misrepresented herself as black, and described it as “a feeling in their head”.
Forstater, a founder of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “Organisations that call people ‘bigots’ and that discriminate against them because of their beliefs can expect to pay significant damages when these cases come to court.
“This final judgment provides me with some measure of closure and vindication, as it requires that CGD compensate me for my loss of income and injury to feelings. And it makes clear that the organisation’s statements about me suggesting that I might have engaged in harassment or discrimination were false.”
She thanked the author JK Rowling for her support.
Forstater’s barrister, Anya Palmer, said the case was “genuinely groundbreaking”.
The London employment tribunal awarded Forstater £91,500 in compensation for loss of earnings, injury to feelings and aggravated damages and £14,900 in interest.
It found that CGD had broken employment law by discriminating against her in three ways: by not offering her an employment contract, not renewing her visiting fellowship and removing her from its website.
CGD said: “Following the employment tribunal’s remedy judgment, the case brought against CGD, its president, Masood Ahmed, and CGD Europe by Maya Forstater will come to a close.
“CGD has and will continue to strive to maintain a workplace that is welcoming, safe, and inclusive to all. The resolution of this case will allow us once again to focus exclusively on our mission: reducing global poverty and inequality through economic research that drives better policy and practice.”
Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ campaign group, said after last July’s judgment: “No one has the right to discriminate against, or harass, trans people simply because they disagree with their existence and participation in society.”
