TheEconomistFebruary 29th 2020 491L
ast december a British employment
tribunal ruled that the Centre for Global
Development, a think-tank, had acted le-
gally when it did not renew Maya Forsta-
ter’s contract because she had tweeted that
a person’s biological sex is immutable. Ms
Forstater, a researcher, had tweeted several
messages critical of the idea that natal
males can become women. She did so from
her personal account but listed her em-
ployer in her Twitter profile. After col-
leagues complained to the human-re-
sources department about her conduct
online, she was asked to add the disclaimer
“views are my own”. She did so. According
to her employer, co-workers objected to
her posting a picture of herself at a protest
with a banner that said “Woman, noun,
adult human female”.
Trans-rights activists cheered, and
women’s-rights and free-speech advocates
were horrified, because a precedent had
been set. In court, Ms Forstater had argued
that her conviction that men cannot be-
come women should be protected in the
same way as a religious belief would be.The judge disagreed, ruling that her “gen-
der-critical” views were “not worthy of re-
spect in a democratic society,” and did not
qualify for protection.
By contrast, another British tribunal
ruled in January that ethical veganism did.
Jordi Casamitjana was dismissed from the
League Against Cruel Sports, an animal-
welfare charity, after disclosing that its
pension fund invested in companies in-
volved in animal testing. Mr Casamitjana is
appealing against his sacking. He says that
he was fired because he is a vegan on ethi-
cal grounds. If he proved that to be the case,
his firing would be discriminatory. His em-
ployer says he was fired for gross miscon-
duct and that his beliefs were irrelevant.
A confluence of technological and cul-
tural change has made such cases almost
inevitable. Thanks to Twitter and other so-
cial networks, employees have many more
opportunities to broadcast their opinions;
off-colour comments that would once have
been uttered in a bar now ricochet around
the world. Companies that strive to dem-
onstrate their progressive character arelikely to find that troublesome.
Meanwhile, the nature of belief has
changed. People in rich countries are less
likely to say that they belong to a church.
Even in America, which is more pious than
most, the proportion of people who say
they have no religious affiliation has
climbed from just 6% in the early 1970s to
22%, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Among millennials, who represent more
than a third of the workforce, the propor-
tion is twice as high. Yet the hole left by the
decline of organised religion has been
filled by a diversity of other beliefs, held
just as fervently. Companies and courts
must grapple with the question: how far
should laws written to protect employees
against discrimination on religious
grounds be applied to those beliefs, too?
The case law on religious discrimina-
tion is well established. Legal judgments
about job requirements often turn on the
question of whether an employer could
have made a reasonable adjustment to ac-
commodate a person’s religious beliefs. A
school in Denmark that fired a Jehovah’s
Witness in 2018 who refused to dance
around a Christmas tree was found guilty
of unlawful discrimination because it
could easily have accommodated such
wishes. But in 1994 a Dutch casino was al-
lowed to sack a Christian croupier who re-Speech at workNone of your business
Companies are increasingly worried about what their employees say—inside and
outside the officeInternational
Correction:Last week we quoted Susan Messonnier
of America’s Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention. Her first name is Nancy. Sorry.