A decision to ban a Christian maths teacher after he misgendered a pupil featured an “unjustified interference” with his rights to freedom of speech and religion, the High Court has been told (Independent, Standard).
Joshua Sutcliffe is pursuing an appeal against a May 2023 prohibition order issued after a regulator found him guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” while working at The Cherwell School in Oxford between 2015 and 2018.
A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel concluded he did not treat a transgender student with “dignity and respect” by failing to use his “preferred pronouns” in class and while appearing as a guest on ITV’s This Morning. It found Mr Sutcliffe failed to safeguard pupils’ wellbeing when saying God had stopped a person from being gay because it was wrong.
The panel also concluded he did not provide a balanced view to a video played in form class about men being “not masculine enough” while at St Aloysius’ College in Islington, north London, in 2018.
The Department for Education (DfE), which accepted the TRA’s recommendation to ban Mr Sutcliffe, opposes the appeal bid, arguing it has been brought too late and has “no merit”.
At a hearing in London, government lawyers said the banned teacher had failed “to distinguish between his role as a teacher and his activities as a preacher”.
Ian Steele, for the DfE, said: “He seeks to make this a case about freedom of religion and freedom of expression, but in truth it is a case about a serious failure to treat pupils with dignity and respect and to safeguard their wellbeing.”
The incidents that took place at the Oxford school had an “adverse effect” on the transgender pupil’s health and attendance, and Mr Sutcliffe “failed even to consider what was in the best interests” of the student, the court heard.
Mr Sutcliffe’s lawyers argued the decision to ban him, which may be reviewed after two years, was “unsafe” and included “perverse” findings.
Michael Phillips, representing Mr Sutcliffe, said in written arguments that the teacher believed that “one’s biological sex is an immutable and essential aspect of one’s personhood and to tamper with it is a denial of something sacred”. Such a belief was legally protected, he said, as was “the conviction that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman, and opposition to homosexual unions”.
Mr Phillips argued that it was a breach of Mr Sutcliffe’s rights to find that he was required to use “preferred pronouns” and was not allowed to talk about “the protected characteristic of ‘ex-homosexual’” nor show the video on masculinity without debate.
The barrister added that there was no evidence of any harm to pupils over the video incident, and that there was an obligation “to expose pupils to ideas that they might not agree with in order to equip them for life”.
On the question of the transgender student’s alleged “adverse mental health”, Mr Phillips said that this was not solely due to the use of pronouns, with the TRA being “wrong” to find using “preferred pronouns” was in his “best interests”.
He went on to say that the regulator had wrongly analysed this, and other aspects of Mr Sutcliffe’s case because it had taken an “extreme ideological” position.
The hearing before Mr Justice Pepperall concluded on Wednesday, with the judge due to issue his written ruling at a later date.
