After a six-year battle, Kristie Higgs has finally been vindicated. The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the 49-year-old school administrator, who was dismissed in 2019 from Farmor’s School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, for expressing traditional Christian views about marriage and sexuality on her personal Facebook account.
The Free Speech Union (FSU) intervened in the case and successfully persuaded the Court to adopt several key arguments, reinforcing vital protections for freedom of belief in the workplace.
Higgs v Farmor’s School is the most significant belief discrimination ruling since Maya Forstater’s victory at the Employment Appeal Tribunal, providing authoritative guidance on how religious and philosophical beliefs should be safeguarded at work. Beyond its immediate outcome, the case marks a pivotal moment in the debate over how employers handle third-party complaints about lawful speech. The ruling makes clear that individuals cannot be dismissed simply because others take offence at their views, setting an important precedent against employers outsourcing disciplinary decisions to ideologically driven activists.
Higgs’ case began in October 2018 when a parent at Farmor’s School complained about posts on her Facebook page. These posts, which critiqued the introduction of LGBT-inclusive education in primary schools, included statements warning of “indoctrination” and “brainwashing” of children. While these words were not her own, she amplified them with urgent calls to action, stating “PLEASE READ THIS! THEY ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN!” and closed with. “Please sign this petition, they have already started to brainwash our innocent wonderfully created children and its happening in our local primary school now.”
Her association with these posts became the basis of an internal investigation at the school. Though she used her maiden name on Facebook and did not identify her employer, the school determined that her views could damage its reputation. According to her lawyers, she was then subjected to a long interrogation during which her Christian views “were described as akin to that of a pro-Nazi right-wing extremist”. She was subsequently dismissed for bringing the school into disrepute.
This set the stage for a protracted legal battle. Higgs argued that she was discriminated against because of her Christian beliefs. The school countered that she was not dismissed for her beliefs per se but for the way she expressed them – an argument that would later be scrutinised in court.
Higgs’ case exemplifies a growing trend in employment disputes, where individuals find themselves dismissed not for their beliefs but for how those beliefs are perceived by third parties. Increasingly, employers cite “reputational damage” as a justification for taking action against employees who express views that some find controversial. However, the courts have made it clear that reputational harm must be demonstrable, not speculative.
At the first stage of the legal process, the Employment Tribunal (ET) ruled against Higgs. While it accepted that her religious beliefs were protected under the Equality Act 2010, it held that her dismissal was lawful because of how her views might be perceived. This reasoning introduced a problematic distinction: Higgs was not sacked because of her beliefs, but because she was perceived to hold “unacceptable” views. In other words, an employer could justify dismissal based not on what an employee actually said, but on what others assumed or misinterpreted about their views.
This interpretation raised a fundamental legal question: Can an employer dismiss an employee simply because third parties object to their lawful beliefs?
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) took a more rigorous approach. It found that the ET had erred in key ways, particularly in failing to ask whether Higgs’ Facebook posts were a manifestation of her beliefs.
UK law recognises that religious and philosophical beliefs include not just private convictions but also the right to express them. As the EAT noted, the manifestation of belief is often inseparable from the belief itself. The Lord’s Prayer, for instance, is a direct manifestation of Christianity. Punishing an employee for saying it would be tantamount to penalising them for being Christian.
The EAT also ruled that the Tribunal had failed to consider whether the school’s concerns about reputational harm were well-founded. Employers cannot rely on vague concerns about offence; there must be demonstrable evidence of actual harm.
However, despite these positive developments, the EAT declined to make a final ruling. Instead, it sent Higgs’ case back to the Tribunal for reconsideration – an outcome that left unresolved the key issue of whether her dismissal was lawful.
At this stage, Higgs appealed to the Court of Appeal, joined by the FSU as an intervener. In a significant ruling, the Court has now found in favour of both Higgs and the FSU’s key submissions.
A panel of three senior judges concluded unanimously that her sacking was “unquestionably a disproportionate response” and that the Facebook posts Ms Higgs shared were not grossly offensive.
Remittal to the Employment Tribunal was deemed unnecessary (except for determination of remedy), as the Court concluded that only one outcome was possible: Higgs’ dismissal was unlawful. Her posts were not objectionable in the legal sense – they were neither grossly offensive nor a direct attack on any community. Any supposed risk of harm was “speculative” rather than real.
As the ruling makes clear, employees do not relinquish their right to lawful expression simply because others find their views controversial. It also sets an important precedent: employers must ensure that any dismissal related to belief expression is based on objective and proportionate grounds.
The FSU’s intervention played a crucial role in shaping the Court’s approach to key legal questions, ensuring that the principles underpinning freedom of belief and expression were rigorously examined.
One of the most important clarifications that emerged from the case was the need for tribunals to assess an employee’s statements based on their actual meaning, rather than relying on subjective interpretations, third-party complaints, or activist-led mischaracterisations. This is a significant safeguard against the tendency of employers to treat controversy itself as evidence of wrongdoing, rather than undertaking a measured assessment of what was actually said and whether it was legally objectionable.
Another vital point advanced by the FSU, and endorsed by the Court, concerned the question of reputational damage. The ruling makes it clear that an employer cannot simply claim that an employee’s speech has caused harm to its reputation without demonstrating concrete evidence of this. It is no longer sufficient for an organisation to justify disciplinary action based on vague assertions of potential controversy or hypothetical public backlash. Instead, there must be a direct and measurable impact – such as a demonstrable loss of clients, funding, or operational functionality – before reputational harm can be considered a valid concern. This is a crucial correction to the overly broad way in which reputational risk has often been weaponised against employees who hold lawful but dissenting views.
The Court also recognised that dismissing an employee based on an inaccurate or unfair characterisation of their views is, in itself, discriminatory. This aspect of the ruling strikes at the heart of a common problem in belief discrimination cases, where individuals are not disciplined for what they have actually said but rather for how their views have been framed by those who object to them. The judgment emphasises that tribunals must consider whether the dismissal was based on a genuine reflection of the employee’s beliefs, rather than a distortion designed to justify punitive action. This protects employees from the creeping tendency of employers to bow to activist pressure by misrepresenting and exaggerating the impact of their statements.
Finally, the ruling reinforced an important legal threshold regarding the distinction between controversial speech and genuinely objectionable speech. The Court confirmed that merely expressing robust, forthright, or even unpopular views does not, in itself, justify dismissal. For speech to reach the level where an employer might lawfully intervene, it must be grossly offensive or amount to a direct attack on a particular group. This is a vital clarification. In recent years, there has been a growing tendency to conflate legitimate expressions of belief with “hate speech” based purely on their perceived offensiveness. Now, however, the Court has drawn a clear line, reaffirming that the law does not, and should not, equate lawful but challenging opinions with speech that genuinely falls outside legal protections.
Taken together, these clarifications represent a significant victory for those who value free speech and intellectual diversity in the workplace. The ruling establishes a more objective, evidence-based framework for handling belief discrimination cases and makes it harder for employers to act as enforcers of ideological conformity at the expense of fundamental rights.
While Higgs has won her case, it shouldn’t be forgotten that her life and career have been upturned by her dismissal. The process is often the punishment in workplace cancellations, and nowhere more so than here.
More generally, the wider legal battle is far from over. There remains a possibility that the case could be appealed to the Supreme Court. If so, the FSU stands ready to defend the hard-won gains established in this ruling.
For now, though, Higgs v Farmor’s School represents a major victory, setting a precedent that should deter employers from penalising lawful speech and provides an essential layer of protection for those who dare to express unorthodox views. In an era where ideological conformity is increasingly demanded in professional settings, this ruling is a vital reaffirmation of the right to speak freely.
Read the judgment here.
