Thread by @AdamWagner1

Very interesting new Court of Appeal judgment on whether a student enrolled on a social work MA course should have been kicked off for making these comments on Facebook judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…

The Court of Appeal said the University *shouldn't* have removed him from the course on fitness to practise grounds.

The case deals with the difficult issue of how to achieve a balance between free speech and the protection of 'protected categories' (e.g. LGBT people)

The judgment is interesting and nuanced. It isn't really (/primarily) about whether the comments justified the removal, it's about how to adequately protect free speech and religious expression within the disciplinary framework of a public-facing profession such as social work

This issue comes up all the time now. An employer is sent an employee's offensive social media posts and asked to discipline them. What does it do? People have free speech rights in a private space, but social media has made us all publishers.

I think the Court of Appeal got the nuance of the issue pretty much right in its summary - the danger is sometimes of entrenchment from both sides

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The Court seemed to have been particularly concerned by a concession by the University during the hearing that *any* disapproval of same sex relations which could be traced back to the person making it would breach professional guidance.

Ultimately, I think, the Court's position is that the real problem was that the Uni jumped to conclusions too quickly, that the appellant was "unteachable". I get the sense that a longer process leading to the same result may have been fine in their eyes