Gender-critical teacher loses unfair dismissal case
AN employment tribunal has dismissed a gender-critical teacher’s complaint that he was unfairly sacked for refusing to refer to a student by their preferred pronouns.
Kevin Lister, 60, was dismissed for gross misconduct in September 2022 by New College Swindon following complaints by two students.
An employment tribunal in Bristol has dismissed Mr Lister’s complaint that he was unfairly sacked and discriminated against for his gendercritical beliefs, and that he had been attempting to protect the student from using hormones.
The teacher at the Wiltshire further education college refused to refer to a biologically female student, aged 17, by their preferred male name and he/him pronouns in A-level maths lessons.
The tribunal heard that the pupil, named Student A, asked Mr Lister make the change in September 2021.
However, Mr Lister said he started to gesture to the student rather than use their birth name or preferred name.
He said it was a “gender-neutral communication style” but accepted the student found it upsetting.
At the end of that month the pupil asked if he was eligible for an allfemale maths competition.
The tribunal heard Mr Lister wrote the student’s female birth name on whiteboard in front of the class and said “she could (enter the competition) because she was a girl”.
Student A spoke to Mr Lister after the lesson, who reportedly told him “taking testosterone is likely to cause long-term medical problems and she would be reliant on the NHS, and the services could not be guaranteed for the future”.
The student was upset, which Mr Lister accepted, and he attempted to console him by calling him an “excellent young lady”, the tribunal was told.
Summarising his views presented during the hearing, the panel said: “Mr Lister considered that (New College Swindon) required staff and students to celebrate ‘students who had been persuaded to take wrong sex hormones’ and likened the social transitioning of a child to the illegal act of performing FGM (female genital mutilation).
“In (Mr Lister’s) closing submissions, he drew on historic references to Dr (Josef) Mengele’s experiments and cited the 10-point Nuremberg Code on human experimentation because, he alleged, ‘the College is an active and willing participant in the medical experiment’.”
Mengele was a notorious Nazi physician at Auschwitz who performed experiments on inmates at the camp.
In its judgment, it said Mr Lister was dismissed due to his conduct and expressing his beliefs in an “objectionable” manner.
It found the student was not at risk from using hormones and that Mr Lister had not adhered to the school’s gender reassignment policy, which was intended to protect students from harassment and discrimination under the Equality Act.
The panel’s decision focused on his behaviour towards Student A.
Other matters, including his social media posts, were investigated but not included in its ruling.
A month after Student A asked the teacher to adopt male pronouns, Mr Lister posted on X, formerly Twitter: “I am not going to call my #transgender students by their preferred name.
“To do so, (is to) support them killing the person they were.
“To call them by their preferred name is like telling a potential #suicide victim to jump off a cliff”.
The panel referred to his other social media posts, and said they argued “sexual orientation was a choice, like whether one might want to play golf”, and that “gay relationships were not ‘as valid’ as straight ones ‘by definition”’.
It added: “He reacted to a photograph (on X) of a woman breastfeeding and expressed the hope that society would admire breasts and ‘not encourage young girls to have them chopped off’.”
He has since been banned by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) from participating in regulated activities with children.
New College Swindon said in a statement: “We are pleased to confirm that the complaints of unfair dismissal and discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief have been dismissed.
“This is a sensitive issue, and individuals are entitled to their personal beliefs.
“A thorough investigation resulted in Mr Lister being dismissed for actions that were deemed discriminatory, causing significant upset and potential harm to a student, amounting to gross misconduct, and not simply for holding gender-critical beliefs.
“The behaviour demonstrated by Mr Lister in this case is not representative of the inclusive culture we work hard to foster at New College Swindon.”