A major free speech victory has been secured after the Supreme Court refused to hear the final appeal in the case of Farmor’s School v Kristie Higgs, bringing to a close a seven-year legal battle that has helped clarify the legal protections for belief and expression in the workplace.
The decision, handed down by Lords Reed, Hamblen and Lady Simler, denies Farmor’s School in Gloucestershire permission to challenge a Court of Appeal ruling that found in favour of Kristie Higgs, a Christian pastoral administrator dismissed in 2019 for Facebook posts raising concerns about extreme sex education and gender ideology in her son’s primary school.
That ruling, delivered in February, was widely hailed as a landmark for freedom of belief. In finding that Ms Higgs had been unlawfully discriminated against, the Court affirmed that employers cannot rely on speculative reputational harm or third-party offence to justify the dismissal of staff who express protected views in private settings. The Supreme Court’s refusal to reopen the case now cements that judgment as binding legal precedent.
The story began in October 2018 when a parent at Farmor’s, a secondary school with academy status, complained about “prejudiced” posts on Ms Higgs’s Facebook page. In them, she criticised the introduction of materials strongly influenced by gender ideology, which she believed would “indoctrinate” children to believe “that same-sex marriage is exactly the same as traditional marriage, and that gender is a matter of choice, not biology, so that it’s up to them what sex they are”.
Following the complaint, Ms Higgs became the subject of an internal school investigation, which included speculative claims that she might “exert influence” over vulnerable children. During the disciplinary process, which included a six-hour interrogation, her Christian beliefs were likened to those of a “pro-Nazi right-wing extremist”.
She was subsequently dismissed for bringing the school into disrepute, setting the stage for a protracted legal battle. Ms Higgs argued that she was discriminated against because of her Christian beliefs. The school countered that the dismissal stemmed not from her beliefs but from how she expressed them – a defence increasingly used in employment disputes where employers cite reputational risk as justification for sanctioning speech some find controversial.
An Employment Tribunal (ET) ruled against Ms Higgs on those very grounds. While accepting that her religious beliefs were protected under the Equality Act 2010, it held that her dismissal was lawful because of how others might perceive the Facebook posts.
Ms Higgs appealed, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that the ET had erred in several ways, particularly in failing to ask whether her posts were in fact a manifestation of her beliefs, and therefore protected by law. UK law recognises that the right to religious and philosophical beliefs includes the right to express them. As the EAT noted, the manifestation of belief is often inseparable from the belief itself. The EAT also ruled that the ET had failed to consider whether the school’s concerns about reputational harm were well-founded or purely notional.
Despite those findings, the EAT did not resolve the case but remitted it to the Tribunal, leaving open the central question of whether Ms Higgs’s dismissal was lawful.
Believing the EAT should have resolved the matter itself, she appealed to the Court of Appeal, joined by the Free Speech Union (FSU) as an intervener. Ultimately, the Court upheld both her appeal and the FSU’s key submissions.
A panel of three senior judges – Lord Justices Underhill and Bean and Lady Justice Falk – ruled unanimously that the dismissal was “unquestionably a disproportionate response”. The Court declined to return the case to the Tribunal, concluding instead that “the ET would be bound to find that the claimant’s dismissal was not objectively justified and accordingly that it constituted unlawful discrimination”.
In reaching its decision, the Court relied on the precedent set in Page v NHS Trust Development, which established that dismissal for expressing a belief is lawful only if the manifestation of that belief is objectively objectionable and the employer’s response is proportionate. Employers must assess what was actually said, not how others may subjectively interpret it.
Another key finding concerned reputational risk. The Court confirmed that an employer cannot rely on vague fears of backlash to justify disciplinary action, and there must be evidence of actual harm, such as a loss of clients, funding or operational capacity. In Ms Higgs’s case, any reputational risk was, the Court found, “speculative at best”.
The ruling also reaffirmed the high threshold for when speech can justify dismissal. Robust or provocative views do not in themselves warrant professional sanction. The Court stressed that even exaggerated or offensive language remains protected unless it crosses the line into speech likely to incite hatred or hostility. This is a critical clarification, given the growing tendency to conflate legitimate expressions of belief with “hate speech” based purely on perceived offensiveness. Ms Higgs’s posts, it concluded, were not objectionable in the legal sense, as they were neither “grossly offensive” nor “primarily intended to incite hatred or disgust for homosexuals or trans people”.
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 political orthodoxy at the expense of fundamental rights.
Responding to the Supreme Court decision to reject Farmor’s School’s final appeal, Ms Higgs said: “Today’s judgment is as important for free speech as it is for freedom of religion. Employers will no longer be able to rely on their theoretical fears of reputational damage or subjective concerns about causing offence to discipline employees for exercising their fundamental freedom to express their deeply held beliefs.”
The Christian Legal Centre, which supported Ms Higgs throughout the case, also welcomed the final outcome. Its chief executive, Andrea Williams, said: “The Court of Appeal ruling, now unequivocally upheld, powerfully demonstrated that the foundational Christian principles of free speech and religious liberty are not yet extinguished from English law. The resolution of Kristie’s case establishes a critical legal precedent that will resonate for many years to come, protecting the right to express Christian beliefs without fear of reprisal.”
