Stonewall was “arrogant and malicious” in her ongoing lawsuit against a gender-critical lawyer, her lawyer said on the last day of the labor tribunal.
Attorney Alison Bailey is suing her cameras, Garden Court and the LGBTQ + charity. She claims to have been offered lower quality work after expressing her opposition to Stonewall’s National Diversity Scheme when it was announced in her chambers in December 2018. The Stonewall program provides advice and assessments for inclusive work places.
Bailey said she had been asked by her cameras to delete two tweets criticizing the LGBTQ + charity’s position on trance rights, which Stonewall had complained about. She refused to do so.
In closing statements on the last day of Monday’s four-week tribunal, Bailey’s lawyer, Ben Cooper QC, said Stonewall had tried to get the tribunal to dismiss her claim.
Cooper told employment judge Sarah Goodman that the GCC and Stonewall had tried to portray Bailey as a “political campaign” against the charity, founded in 1989, rather than as a legitimate complaint.
“[They] organize an extraordinary attack on this tribunal to “satisfy the plaintiff’s claim and the evidence it has provided in support of it” and do so in a way that implies some pressure … to encourage this court to dismiss the claim for fear of “Being seen has helped the plaintiff too much,” Cooper said.
He told the tribunal that the alleged approach was “typical of the rude, malicious and oppressive way in which they dealt with this trial”, as well as “problems before the trial”.
Goodman replied, “We’re pretty thick-skinned, so we’ll just look at the facts and the evidence.”
Stonewall accused Bailey of being “literally the author of her own misfortune” and said in written statements that she had given “selfish and evasive” evidence and “did not take responsibility for her actions and the consequences that resulted from them.”
“Her ignorant, provocative and ill-judged social media posts generated complaints that her cameras were obliged to investigate,” it said.
In 2019, Bailey co-founded the LGB Alliance, an organization for lesbians, gays and bisexuals, to provide an alternative to Stonewall that opposes its transgender policies – and tweeted in support of its launch.
Bailey claims the tweet attracted online abuse, including death threats, firearms memes and messages accusing her of being a “terf” – an acronym for “trans-exclusive radical feminist.”
Within 48 hours, her cameras tweeted that Bailey was under investigation. The tribunal was told that this gave credence to Internet “trolls” who accused her of being transphobic.
Cooper said Monday that Bailey’s cameras “seek to downplay this abuse” and violated the obligation of confidentiality by announcing that it was under investigation.
“The response tweet was not only sent in violation of the obligation of confidentiality, but was sent even without the warning message from the heads of the chambers,” he said.
In response, GCC lawyer Andrew Hochhauser said no response from the chamber had deterred Bailey in her tweet.
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