Teacher who said being LGBTQ+ was a sin and transgender people were "just confused" fails to overturn finding that she was guilty of unacceptable professional conduct

In Leger v Secretary of State for Education a teacher argued that the regulator had made an error of law and/or had breached her human rights after it found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct because she had made inappropriate comments during a religious educational lesson.

Facts

Ms Leger is a conservative Roman Catholic. She believes that biological sex is immutable and sexual relationships should only exist within a marriage between a man and a woman.

In August 2017, she started working as a teaching assistant at Bishop Justus Church of England School, a secondary school run by the Aquinas Trust. By November 2017, she successfully applied for the post of French and Spanish teacher and also taught some religious studies and PSHE lessons.

In 2022 she gave a lesson to year 7 pupils on religious studies. She was given power point slides which covered LGBTQ+ topics and had looked at these in advance. She believed that the school had gone “too far” and she was determined to tell her pupils the truth, as she saw it, to counter the “one sided narrative” provided. She therefore started the lesson by saying “as a Christian I do not support the LGBT ideology” which prompted a number of pupils to ask questions. During the lesson she said that being LGBT was “not fine” and was “a sin”, that transgender people were “just confused” and that God always saw someone's birth sex. 

A pupil in that class complained. Her mother told the school that her daughter was exploring who she was and had been distressed by Ms Leger's comments.

Ms Leger was suspended and then dismissed. The school also referred her conduct to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) which led to a Professional Conduct Panel (PCP) hearing. The panel heard evidence by Ms Leger, the pupil who'd lodged the complaint and her mother and three other people who acted as character witnesses.

Outcome of PCP hearing

The PCP found that Ms Leger was tolerant of people from different backgrounds and with different beliefs. But she had chosen not to give a balanced view on the issue, didn't appear to understand that teachers can influence their pupils, or that her comments could have upset them.  

It found that her behaviour had breached the Teachers' Standards to:

• uphold trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, and show tolerance of and respect for the rights of others; and
• have proper and professional regard for the ethos, policies and practices of the school in which they teach

It concluded that she didn't meet the standards expected of the profession, was guilty of misconduct of a serious nature and that amounted to unacceptable professional conduct. Her behaviour, however, would not negatively damage public perception of the profession and didn't amount to conduct that might bring the profession into disrepute. It therefore, didn't ban her from teaching.

The Secretary of Stated accepted the PCP's recommendation and concluded that publicising the decision would meet the public interest requirements of declaring proper standards in the profession. 

Ms Leger challenged that decision by way of judicial review. In order to succeed she had to establish that the PCP/Secretary of State had made an error when reaching their decision or that her human rights had been breached.

Outcome of the judicial review

Before considering Ms Leger's specific objections, the High Court pointed to the well-established principles it had to consider namely: :

• unless the decision reached by the PCP/Secretary of State was one no reasonable panel could have reached, the court could not interfere with it; and 
• the PCP/Secretary of State are experts and ‘informed decision-makers’ who are well placed to decide whether Ms Leger's behaviour was unacceptable and are well placed to decide on the appropriate sanction. The court could only interfere with this if the decision was wrong.

Ms Leger argued that the panel hadn't considered the context in which she'd expressed her views, had breached her rights under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protect freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression, and that publishing the fact that she had been found guilty of misconduct breached her right to a private life under Article 8.

The court rejected all of her arguments. It found that Ms Leger had not presented a balanced view of LGBT issues and had failed to follow the school's policy on teaching religious studies which required staff to be ‘objective’ and to recognise that we live in a pluralistic society where some people have faith and others don't.

The court accepted that Ms Leger's human rights had been restricted, but said that was permissible by law under the statutory scheme for regulation of teachers set out in the Education Act 2002 and the Teachers' Disciplinary (England) Regulations 2012. This provided guidance on the standards of behaviour teachers are expected to meet and what amounts to teacher misconduct.

And it concluded that it was appropriate for the DfE to publish the decision. It accepted that a person's professional reputation can be protected as an aspect of their private life and that publishing findings of unacceptable professional conduct were likely to affect a teacher's reputation and possibly their employment sanctions. But publication was important and was in the public interest.

Lessons for other schools and colleges

There's been a number of recent cases where teachers beliefs have come into conflict with the curriculum they are expected to teach. The government published advice in 2014 on ‘The Equality Act 2010 and schools’. That document remains the current non-statutory guidance for school leaders, school staff, governing bodies, and local authorities.

It provides that ‘no school or individual teacher, is under a duty to support, promote or endorse marriage of same sex couples’. And, on the question of sexual orientation and religion or belief, it states that individual teachers ‘having a view about something does not amount to discrimination. So it should not be unlawful for a teacher in any school to express personal views on sexual orientation provided that it is done in an appropriate manner and context (for example when responding to questions from pupils, or in a RE or in a PSHE lesson).'

What is appropriate will depend on the context. For example, a tribunal concluded that it wasn't acceptable for a college teacher to try and talk a student out of transitioning and had manifested his beliefs in a way that was “manifestly objectionable”.  There is, of course, a difference between a teacher who attempts to persuade their students about the rights and wrongs of a particular viewpoint or belief and one who simply shares what they believe. The former isn't acceptable but the latter might be.

Teachers are held to high standard because they are in a position of influence and power over children or young adults and schools and colleges can discipline them if they overstep the mark.  

In most cases, it is sensible to try and resolve these types of conflicts before they come to a head. In this case, Ms Leger spoke to the deputy head to express her growing unease about being asked to teach LGTBQ+ material that conflicted with her faith. She suggested that Ms Leger should be excused from teaching these subjects but nothing appears to have been done following that conversation. 

Clearly, it won't always be possible, or even appropriate, to remove a teacher from teaching a particular part of the curriculum because their personal beliefs clash with those being taught. But it is something you might want to consider in appropriate cases. That said, the courts have made it very clear that if an employee's beliefs clash with a basic aspect of their job, they may be able to lawfully dismiss them. We looked at a couple of examples here. 

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