A Christian teacher who was banned from the classroom over ‘misgendering’ a pupil has lost a High Court appeal against the decision.
Lawyers for Joshua Sutcliffe argued it was ‘perverse’ to expect him to use the child’s preferred pronouns, which had no basis in law.
In a hearing in May, they also said it was an ‘unjustified interference’ with his right to freedom of speech and religion.
The 34-year-old maths teacher was banned last year after the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) found him guilty of ‘unacceptable professional conduct’.
He had said ‘well done girls’ to a transgender pupil who identified as male, and a friend, while working at The Cherwell School in Oxford in 2017.
Maths teacher Joshua Sutcliffe, who was banned from the classroom over ‘misgendering’ a pupil, has lost a High Court appeal against the decision
Mr Sutcliffe later did not use the pupil’s preferred pronouns during an appearance on ITV ‘s This Morning
He later did not use the pupil’s preferred pronouns during an appearance on ITV‘s This Morning.
All of this was before the Tories’ draft guidance last year on transgender children, which stated teachers should not be made to use ‘preferred pronouns’.
Mr Sutcliffe believes that the TRA would not have banned him had the guidance been in place at the time.
However yesterday, Mr Justice Pepperall dismissed the appeal, concluding that Mr Sutcliffe ‘fails to understand or accept the harm that he caused vulnerable children in his class’.
In a written ruling, he said Mr Sutcliffe had to balance his religious convictions against his professional duties to ‘treat children with dignity and respect and to safeguard their wellbeing’.
And he said the teacher had ‘deliberately used female pronouns to refer to a transgender male pupil’ in a way that he ‘would be ‘outed’ without regard for the child’s ‘distress.’
He said that Mr Sutcliffe had to ‘respect and celebrate the pupils’ personal autonomy’ and added: ‘Just because misgendering a transgender pupil might not be unlawful, does not mean that it is appropriate conduct for a teacher’.
After the ruling, Mr Sutcliffe, who is being supported by Christian Concern, said: ‘I still stand by my Christian convictions that it is harmful and detrimental to affirm gender confused children.
Mr Sutcliffe had said ‘well done girls’ to a transgender pupil who identified as male, and a friend, while working at The Cherwell School in Oxford in 2017
‘This is the belief I am fighting for which is shared by not only Christians but many who do not believe in harmful transgender ideology.
‘I have been a marked man ever since I dared to express my Christian beliefs in a school.’
The original TRA panel concluded he did not treat the transgender student with ‘dignity and respect’ by failing to use his ‘preferred pronoun’.
It also found against him because he had expressed Christian views about homosexuality and had not provided a balanced view regarding a video he shown pupils about masculinity.
The ban was due to be reviewed two years after it was made.
Michael Phillips, representing Mr Sutcliffe, said in written arguments that the teacher believed ‘one’s biological sex is an immutable and essential aspect of one’s personhood and to tamper with it is a denial of something sacred.’
Mr Sutcliffe, who has a young child, was found not to have acted ‘maliciously’, was a ‘competent’ teacher and showed ‘high standards’ in his personal life, the court was told.
It is understood he now hopes to take the case to the Court of Appeal,
