The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has decided not to investigate a gender-critical barrister who was accused of being transphobic by misgendering two trans lawyers, reports Legal Futures. The regulator said the tweets by Sarah Phillimore attracted “a high level of protection” under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of expression).
That’s great news, and we’re delighted to have played a part in securing this outcome, providing funding to help Ms Phillimore secure legal advice from top law firm Doyle Clayton.
The complaints brought forward were that, earlier this year, Ms Phillimore used the pronoun “him” in relation to Dr Victoria McCloud – a Queen’s/King’s Bench master for 14 years – and Robin Moira White, a barrister at Old Square Chambers, and also referred to Dr McCloud as “this man”.
Ms Phillimore also said she doubted that Dr McCloud could act fairly in a case concerning gender-critical views.
Its letter, published by the St Johns Chambers barrister on X (formerly Twitter), said: “We do not consider in the context of the back and forth between the parties that the posts were seriously offensive.
“Given that the remarks were made out of work and were connected to discussions on gender critical theory, the BSB will not take any further action in this case.”
The BSB said: “In line with the BSB’s board paper on [the] Conduct in Non-Professional Life Project, the BSB has decided that it will not ally itself with one side over the other in the gender debate.
“We appreciate that there is an ongoing, complex and rapidly changing debate about views on the immutability of gender and the rights of transgender people, and this debate is political in nature (meaning expressions concerning this debate are likely to be afforded a high level of protection) and that equality issues in this area may intersect with human rights considerations, such as article 9 (freedom of thought, belief and religion) and article 10.
“We also recognise that gender-critical views as well as the belief that a person can change their sex or gender are both capable of amounting to philosophical beliefs which are protected under the Equality Act 2010.
“There may be some tension between the protection afforded to those with gender-critical views and the rights of transgender people not to be discriminated against, harassed or victimised on the basis of gender reassignment.”
Last year, the BSB dropped a case study from its revised social media guidance concerning gender-critical views after it was accused of promoting a ‘gender ideology’.
But the regulator stressed that this did not mean it would “never be interested in barristers’ conduct involving the gender debate, the expression of philosophical beliefs, or deliberately misgendering a transgender person”.
Worth reading in full.
Ms Phillimore recently co-authored Transpositions, a collection of narratives from women and men about how they first became aware of the conflict around ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and how they decided to make their voices heard. The book is available here, and Graham Linehan has written about the launch event here.
