A UK doctor who was sacked because he refused to use transgender pronouns due to his Christian beliefs has said he will appeal a decision that his employer did not breach his right to religious freedom.
Dr David Mackereth, an experienced emergency department doctor from Dudley in England’s West Midlands, had claimed the Department for Work and Pensions had discriminated against him because of his religious beliefs and cost him a job as a disability claim assessor.
An employment tribunal heard he was sacked from his job at a Birmingham assessment centre after saying he would not “call any six foot tall bearded man” madam during a “abstract discussion” with his manager.
But the tribunal found, in ruling handed down this week, that his “lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals”. The panel said he was not subjected to discrimination.
Mackereth, who said he was “deeply concerned” by the ruling, has indicated he intends to appeal.
“Without intellectual and moral integrity, medicine cannot function and my 30 years as a doctor are now considered irrelevant compared to the risk that someone else might be offended,” he said in widely published comments.
“I believe that I have to appeal in order to fight for the freedom of Christians to speak the truth. If they cannot, then freedom of speech has died in this country, with serious ramifications for the practise of medicine in the UK.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre which represented Mackereth in court, has described the ruling as “deeply shocking and unjust”.
“This is an astonishing judgment and one that if upheld will have seismic consequences not just for the NHS [National Health Service] and for Christians, but anyone in the work place who is prepared to believe and say that we are created male and female,” she said.
A DWP spokesman was quoted in The Independent saying that the organisation had “acted to protect claimants from behaviour that would have failed to treat them with dignity, so we welcome this ruling”.
“We expect all assessors to approach their work sensitively.”
Mackereth now works as an emergency department doctor in Shropshire.
