The Claimant, who was a Christian and employed by a secondary school latterly as a pastoral administrator and work experience manager, was dismissed for gross misconduct. A parent at the school had emailed the Head Teacher complaining that the Claimant had expressed "homophobic and prejudiced views" on her Facebook page and after a disciplinary process she was dismissed; her appeal against her dismissal failed. She brought claims to the ET of discrimination and harassment, within the meaning of sections 13 and 26 respectively of the Equality Act 2010, in both cases on the ground of religion or belief. Both claims were dismissed and she appealed to the EAT. The EAT allowed the appeal and remitted the case back to the ET. Although the Claimant had to that extent succeeded in her appeal, she believed that the EAT should have gone further and have held for itself that her claim succeeded; she appealed to the Court of Appeal on that basis.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal. The following conclusions from Lord Justice Underhill have been reproduced from the judgment:

(1) The dismissal of an employee merely because they have expressed a religious or other protected belief to which the employer, or a third party with whom it wishes to protect its reputation, objects will constitute unlawful direct discrimination within the meaning of the Equality Act.

(2) However, if the dismissal is motivated not simply by the expression of the belief itself (or third parties' reaction to it) but by something objectionable in the way in which it was expressed, determined objectively, then the effect of the decision in Page v NHS Trust Development Authority is that the dismissal will be lawful if, but only if, the employer shows that it was a proportionate response to the objectionable feature – in short, that it was objectively justified.

(3) Although point (2) modifies the usual approach under the Equality Act so as to conform with that required by the European Convention of Human Rights, that "blending" is jurisprudentially legitimate.

(4) In the present case the Claimant, who was employed in a secondary school, had posted messages, mostly quoted from other sources, objecting to Government policy on sex education in primary schools because of its promotion of "gender fluidity" and its equation of same-sex marriage with marriage between a man and a woman. It was not in dispute, following the earlier decision of the EAT in Forstater v GCD Europe, that the Claimant's beliefs that gender is binary and that same-sex marriage cannot be equated with marriage between a man and a woman are protected by the Equality Act.

(5) The school sought to justify her dismissal on the basis that the posts in question were intemperately expressed and included insulting references to the promoters of gender fluidity and "the LGBT crowd" which were liable to damage the school's reputation in the community: the posts had been reported by one parent and might be seen by others. However, neither the language of the posts nor the risk of reputational damage were capable of justifying the Claimant's dismissal in circumstances where she had not said anything of the kind at work or displayed any discriminatory attitudes in her treatment of pupils.