Our Client – Emma Bateman – Co Chair Of Green Party Women (GPW) (Suspended)
5 March 2022
Branch Austin McCormick’s client, Emma Bateman, was re-elected in January 2022 as Co-Chair of Green Party Women (GPW). She was almost immediately given a no-fault suspension. She believes this was a pattern as she was given a no-fault suspension in early 2021 when she had for the 2nd time been re-elected Co Chair in 2021.
Emma believes in speaking up for women’s sex-based rights. She holds “gender critical” views that sex is immutable, that sex and gender are different and that humans can’t change sex. She has questioned whether a trans women could really be female, or whether it is fair that a man self-identifying as a woman should be allowed to compete against woman in sport. She believes that there should be single sex spaces in prisons, sports and rape crisis shelters. She believes she has been vilified and traduced by Green Party members due to her beliefs and subjected to harassment by being suspended and unsuspended in a game of cat and mouse.
Emma has instructed Branch Austin McCormick LLP to investigate her possible claims against the Green Party under the Equality Act 2010, those possible claims being discrimination for her gender critical views, harassment, victimsation and breach of her membership contract with the Green Party.
Emma has also instructed Branch Austin McCormick LLP to investigate whether she may legally challenge the Green Party’s dogmatic policy “Trans Women are Women”.
Emma has launched a crowd-funding campaign to help fund her legal fees. This is due to go live on Sunday 6 March 2022. Donations to her campaign via CrowdJustice can be made via the link below www.crowdjustice.com
Gender critical beliefs are protected beliefs under section 10 of the Equality Act 2010 following the Employment Appeal Tribunal case of Maya Forstater v CGD Europe and others UKEAT/0105/20/JOJ. Emma instructs Elliot Hammer, partner and Head of Employment at Branch Austin McCormick LLP.
Elliot says “I believe Emma’s case is likely to be key in the law’s task of grappling with the thorny and naturally antagonistic concepts of free speech and transgender beliefs. At present, there remains a jurisprudential question as to whether the Courts should allow the individual, in any meaningful way, to freely manifest her sincerely held gender critical beliefs”. Hopefully, sex-based protections for women will survive the 21st Century. Elliot Hammer is a Partner and Head of Employment at Branch Austin McCormick LLP. He was Times Lawyer of the
Week in September 2021 for winning Sonia Appleby’s whistleblowing trial against England’s only Child
Gender Identity Clinic.
