Important appeal judgment - Court of Appeal finds that teacher was unfairly dismissed after she posted messages on her personal Facebook account opposing the teaching in schools of “gender fluidity” and that same-sex marriage is equivalent to marriage between a man and a woman: her belief that such teaching is wrong is derived from her Christian faith.

There is a useful press summary (judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…) and also a summary in the judgment for "lawyers or skim-readers" (are we not the same?!) I haven't read it in full but my first reaction is that the judgment seems to have changed the way direct discrimination in the Equality Act works - allowing in some instances for "objective justification" to be considered as it is in European Convention on Human Rights cases about direct discrimination.

In short, under the Equality Act there is no possible justification for direct discrimination, you simply cannot put someone to a detriment because of their protected characteristic (e.g. religion, race etc) - but what the court is saying her is there will be some situations where the conduct of an employee, despite being because of their religion may be so bad that it can justify sacking because it's not "objectively justifiable", e.g. if the posts demonstrated discriminatory attitudes in her treatment of pupils (which they didn't here, which is part of the reason she succeeded). This is in line with the way direct discrimination is dealt with under human rights law. [correct me if I'm wrong on this].

This seems very important, and a big change (though there are some cases before which the courts say justify it). The reasoning at paragraphs 81-97 is somewhat... complex, so seems ripe for a Supreme Court appeal given the importance of the point.

The Divisional Court has ruled that the Government acted unlawfully and irrationally when deciding not to implement the full funding recommendation in Lord Bellamy’s Criminal Legal Aid Review.

I had the rare honour of acting for my professional colleagues, Criminal Law Solicitors Association (@CrimeSolicitors) and the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association (@lccsa), the Interested Parties in the case. Their press release is below.
The Claimant @TheLawSociety was superbly represented by Tom de la Mare KC @thebrieftweet, Gayatri Sarathy and Emmeline Plews of @BlackstoneChbrs, instructed by John Halford of Bindmans LLP Gayatri Sarathy and Emmeline Plews of Blackstone Chambers, instructed by John Halford of @BindmansLLP.

The amount of work which went into putting the case together and presenting the oral arguments, and standing up for the rule of law, was extraordinary - a credit to the profession.

It begins inauspiciously

https://twitter.com/AlexanderHorne1/status/1732439810676048362

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:

- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed)
- The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!

The Home Secretary acted unlawfully by accommodating, since December 2021, thousands of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels. Kent Council also acted unlawfully in passing on responsibility for them.

https://t.co/sFYZqVHJogjudiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…
A judgment suffused with humanity, legal rigour and common sense from Mr Justice Chamberlain, starting from changing the parties' preferred acronym to emphasise the human element.

Judgment:
Summary: https://t.co/cMXxZJdw4a https://t.co/bGdb6svfNSjudiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…
judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…

The House of Commons Privileges Committee has reported on the conduct of MPs who impugned 'the integrity of that Committee and its members' and attempted 'to lobby or intimidate those members or to encourage others to do so'

Implies that the members are in contempt and asks… https://t.co/P9WRXWMOOPtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…






This is the suggestion of contempt based on Erskine May (the Parliamentary procedure bible) - which I think is quite convincing. The comments of members about the Privileges Committee being essentially corrupted were very arguably over the line

Here is is the full Privileges Committee report
committees.parliament.uk/publications/4… Clean sweep - not sure what else they could have found against him

Today, the House of Lords will debate new regulations which greatly expand powers of police to ban or restrict peaceful protests - well beyond road blocking (which the law already covers)

@friends_earth have published my legal opinion on the regulations:
friendsoftheearth.uk/system-change/… The @HansardSociety put on an excellent event with @TomRHickman and @RuthFox01 on the constitutional problems with the regulations which mirror a clause to the public order bill the govt put forward less than a year ago

I advised Friends of the Earth @friends_earth on important new protest law being debated in the House of Lords tomorrow which will allow police to restrict protests if they believe there "may" be a "more than minor" hindrance to "day-to-day activities" 1/2
theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/j… Friends of the Earth have decided to publish my legal opinion in full which you can read here - and exec summary below (2/2): …ughtystreetchambers-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal…

Crikey Blames:
1. The Privileges Committee
2. Harriet Harman
3. Sue Gray
4. Labour Party
5. Lib Dem’s
6. SNP
7. Some Tory MPs
8. Daniel Stilitz KC

Here the Met Police Commissioner spends 100s of words defending policing of the Coronation - makes a few fair points. What he totally fails to mention is the right to protest under the Human Rights Act, which the police have a responsibility to protect. standard.co.uk/comment/metrop… This is what Met get wrong again and again - they don't take human rights to protest seriously. No surprise after years of govt saying disruption is the enemy they go after it like it's the biggest threat. Perhaps police should worry less about being applauded and cheered and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This is the result of criminalising “serious disruption”. The police make spurious arrests on the flimsiest grounds The @metpoliceuk now say they “regret” arresting some of the protesters. Note that they found equipment they thought could be used for “locking on”, a new criminal offence, which it turns out was for securing signs 1/2 news.met.police.uk/news/update-ar…

This government claims to value freedom of speech but has presided over the criminalisation of "serious disruption", which directly clashes with the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and assembly. We will see on Sat how that plays out - not optimistic based on this 👇 twitter.com/i/web/status/1… I am not surprised that the @metpoliceuk think it is now their duty to prevent disruption - they pay lip service in other tweets to the right to freedom of speech but once you get to a point where noisy protest is illegal the right becomes a dead letter.

There is nothing wrong with trying to find none hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, however, the emphasis in the media reporting on the deterrent effect of potentially poor conditions is very concerning /1 The government lost a high court challenge (I was involved at the earlier stages) to the standard of accommodation for asylum seekers at Napier Barracks. The Home Secretary (Patel) was warned then that conditions were inadequate but went ahead anyway (bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/…) /2

My thoughts are filled with what is happening in Israel and I will be talking about it tonight. It looks like there are red lines in a democracy, and it is important to remember that the *people* are the final protector, not the institutions of government or the courts

https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1640024371048660993

The connection to my book and Covid: we banned public protest. We did it to stop people protesting against lockdowns, Hancock admits in his book. We are getting to a dangerous position in the UK of seeing public protest as a nuisance rather than an essential democratic check.

I have always seen the cab rank rule as part of being a barrister. I have to admit I don't always find it easy, but I follow it to a fault and do my absolute best for every client whomever they are and whatever views they have. /1 There are arguments for and against the cab rank rule, but it is part of the Code of Conduct and I see why it exists. Having said that, I also support the right of individuals to conscientiously object to the Code of Conduct, presumably with a view to changing it /2

My summary view of Johnson's evidence is the same as it was before he started: his case that the guidance allowed boozy non-socially distanced drinks events with no work being done is absurd and he's either lying that he thought it did or was reckless for asserting it. I think his best outcome for the 1 and 8 December statements is he was reckless not lying when he made the statements to Parliament, because he consulted his press spads who were at the events rather than people who knew what the rules and guidance actually said.

Johnson now in serious trouble about there being no mitigations put in place during the gatherings to prevent the spread of covid if they were necessary for work. Flailing around talking about testing in the building, not touching each other's pens... not specific to those events Obvious point is there were no mitigating measures, so even if plausible "morale boosting" boozy events were necessary in government AND allowed you to avoid social distancing, guidance required mitigation - but there was none because it's nonsense to say they kept to guidance

I agree - he's very difficult to pin down at the best of times and they are going to have to navigate a morass of law and guidance which barely anyone was able to during the pandemic, and was itself confusing and vague at points.

https://twitter.com/DinahGLRoseKC/status/1638470053216567298

And because they don't have any clear evidence he deliberately misled parliament, they will have to rely on "well you must have known", to which he will respond, po faced with his palms outwards, "I genuinely didn't, that was my view, and I'm sorry I got it wrong"

The Privilege Committee evidence is here: committees.parliament.uk/publications/3… Really brings home the fact that Johnson was never assured that "all guidance was followed" and in fact everyone around him was saying that it probably wasn't. Absolutely absurd for him to claim nonetheless that he believed until Sue Gray's report that it was

Just reading Boris Johnson's evidence - I'm not going to summarise all of it (there is a lot in there). It's well-drafted as you would expect, but on a careful reasons there are some obvious dangers for Johnson (thread) committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidenc… I think the key risk to him is is not having corrected the record in relation to this statement

"all guidance was followed completely in No. 10".