Cambridgeshire county council has paid a female social work manager £54,000 in compensation after admitting discriminating against her for her gender-critical views – having forced ex-employee Lizzy Pitts to endure 10 months of uncertainty, the council’s climbdown came just minutes before its legal team was due in court to contest her Employment Tribunal claim.
Cambridgeshire county council launched disciplinary proceedings against Lizzy Pitt over gender critical comments she made at a workplace LGBTQ+ peer support group.
Following a meeting of that group in January 2023, Ms Pitt, who describes herself as “a lesbian who believes that sex is real”, was subjected to a group complaint by colleagues.
Her alleged ‘speech crime’ was to express her belief that sex is binary and immutable, and that therefore there are two sexes and people cannot change sex. For good measure, she added that women’s sport was being ruined by men competing as women, and that biological woman have a right to single-sex spaces such as women’s refuges, changing rooms and prisons.
The reaction of Ms Pitt’s colleagues to hearing perfectly cogent, lawful and empirically verifiable views that they disagreed with yet were apparently intellectually incapable of rebutting was to accuse her of “symbolic violence”, something the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes as “a form of violence that is exerted for the most part… through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition… recognition or even feeling”.
One member of the group claimed he couldn’t sleep for two nights “thinking about this cruelty”, while another said she too had suffered several nights of poor sleep after the incident, and had continued to experience problems with sleeping and anxiety dreams. A third colleague said that by the end of the meeting he was “shaking in disbelief” and “traumatised”.
Following these somewhat implausible claims, the council launched a probe into Ms Pitt’s behaviour that finished in June last year. Remarkably, it reached the conclusion that Ms Pitt had indeed “made comments that were non-inclusive and caused considerable offence”.
Following the investigation, Ms Pitt was issued with a management instruction in regard to her conduct and suspended from the LGBT network for a period of 12 months.
Speaking at the time, the 62-year-old said: “The whole process was intensely stressful and humiliating for me.
“It left me feeling that my colleagues and my employer regarded me as a bigot who could only be tolerated in the workplace if I was forced to keep my beliefs to myself even when they were relevant.”
Four months later, in October 2023, Ms Pitt took the local authority to an employment tribunal pleading harassment related to sexual orientation and her philosophical belief that gender is immutable.
Her tribunal had been due to commence on Monday 29th July, but after making their former employee wait around for 10 months, the council decided to back down at precisely 8:38am on the morning of the hearing. Having accepted liability, it agreed to pay her £54,000 in compensation. Ms Pitt’s legal team has also made an application for an order that the council pays all her legal costs, which the Tribunal will decide upon at a later hearing.
Following the council’s last-minute climbdown, Ms Pitt expressed her hope that “other employers will start to learn that it’s a bad idea to try to stop lesbians asserting their boundaries and silence staff who know that sex is real, and sometimes matters.”
Liz McGlone, Ms Pitt’s lawyer, said: “For Lizzy personally, it’s vindication that she was discriminated against.
“It’s another victory in terms of gender-critical beliefs and the fact that they are protected beliefs within the workplace, and employers need to ensure that that is recognised.”
A Cambridgeshire County council spokesman said: “We will reflect carefully on this outcome, as well as undertaking a review of our policies and procedures accordingly.”
The incursion of trans ideology into social work is not a new phenomenon.
Last year, the UK’s Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), an independent body under the Ministry of Justice, was accused of teaching “trans ideology as fact” to vulnerable children.
Guidance provided to social workers dealing with children in the family courts, suggests asking children 13 and above: “Your parents have told me that you are a girl/boy, is that what you think too?”. Other questions suggested include asking about children’s “sexuality”, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”.
In another document, published in 2021, it tells practitioners that if they fail to ask a child over 13 about their gender identity or sexuality, they should ‘record a defensible decision’ as to why they chose not to.
The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) – the largest professional association for social workers in the UK – also regularly publishes posts on its website with titles such as ‘How social workers can support the struggle for trans rights’ and ‘Dog whistles in context – transphobia’.
Ms Pitt’s legal action against Cambridgeshire County Council follows social worker Rachel Meade who took Westminster City Council and regulator Social Work England to tribunal.
In a landmark judgment for workplace free speech earlier this year, Ms Meade, who was helped by the FSU, was awarded £58,000 in damages from Westminster city council and Social Work England.
Ms Meade brought a case against the council and Social Work England in 2022 for harassment and sex discrimination after she was suspended for posting gender critical views on her private Facebook account.
The dedicated social worker with an unblemished 20-year record was suspended from her job at Westminster city council after a single complaint was made by a Mr Aedan Wolton, then a colleague of hers and now Sport England’s ‘Diversity Champion’, about allegedly “transphobic” posts on her private Facebook page.
According to Mr Wolton, Rachel’s “transphobia” was evidenced by the fact that she shared links to news articles, including one from the Mail on Sunday, about transgender issues, as well as to blogs and petitions relating to the national debate over whether it should be made easier for people to legally change their gender.
Mr Wolton’s single complaint to the regulator led to what Rachel describes as a year-long “Orwellian nightmare” (Mail).
An investigation by the regulator found Rachel’s posts to be “potentially discriminatory to members of the transgender community”, and said her “fitness to practice was impaired by way of misconduct”.
Having concluded that Rachel’s actions had the potential to undermine public confidence in social workers – even though there was no evidence her work had been affected – Social Work England sanctioned Meade for 12 months under a disposal agreement. She was also referred to a fitness to practise hearing (Times).
Despite Meade subsequently [feeling pressured into] expressing regret for any “unintentional upset” caused and agreeing to additional training, Westminster city council suspended her and threatened her with the sack for misconduct.
However, in what lawyers have described as an unprecedented move, the employment tribunal has now awarded almost £58,000 in damages, including £40,000 for injury to feelings against both organisations. (The Remedy Judgment is available here).
