An employment tribunal has found that a doctor engaged to carry out health assessments for the Department for Work and Pensions was not discriminated against on the grounds of religion or belief for refusing to address transgender patients by their chosen pronoun.
The tribunal accepted that the doctor's Christianity was protected under the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010). However, it held that the doctor's particular beliefs that God only created males and females and that a person cannot choose their gender, his lack of belief in transgenderism, and his conscientious objection to transgenderism, were views incompatible with human dignity which conflicted with the fundamental rights of others and so were not protected religious or philosophical beliefs under the EqA 2010.
Case: Mackereth v The Department for Work and Pensions and another ET/1304602/18 (2 October 2019) (Perry EJ).