Lawyer Allison Bailey is suing her chambers, the Garden Court and the LGBTQ + charity. She claims that she was offered a lower quality job after expressing her opposition to Stonewall’s national diversity champion program when it was announced in its chambers in December 2018. The Stonewall program provides advice and ratings for inclusive workplaces. Bailey said she was asked by her chambers to delete two tweets criticizing the LGBTQ + charity’s position, which Stonewall had complained about. She refused to do so. Closing the filing on the final day of the four-week trial on Monday, Bailey’s lawyer, Ben Cooper QC, said Stonewall had tried to persuade the court to dismiss her claim. Cooper told employment judge Sarah Goodman that the GCC and Stonewall had tried to characterize Bailey as “campaigning” against the 1989 charity, rather than a legitimate denunciation. “[They] launch an extraordinary attack on this court because “it may be the plaintiff’s allegation and the evidence he has given to support it”, and do so in a way that puts a degree of pressure on “A claim for fear of being seen helped the plaintiff too much,” Cooper said. He told the court that the alleged approach was “characteristic of the high, malicious and repressive way in which they approached this trial”, as well as “the issues before the trial”. Goodman replied: “We are quite coarse, so we will just look at the facts and figures.” Stonewall accused Bailey of being “literally the author of her own misfortune” and said in written submissions that she had given “self-serving and evasive” evidence and “failed to take responsibility for her actions and the consequences.” “Her ignorant, inflammatory and slanderous posts on social media provoked complaints that her chambers were obliged to investigate,” she said. In 2019, Bailey co-founded the LGB Alliance – an organization for lesbians, gays and bisexuals to offer an alternative to Stonewall that opposes its transgender policies – and wrote on Twitter in support of its release. Bailey claims the tweet attracted cyberbullying, including death threats, “memes with guns” and messages accusing her of being “terf” – an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”. Within 48 hours, her chambers had posted a tweet saying Bailey was under investigation. The court said that this gave credibility to the “trolls” of the Internet who accused her of being transphobic. Cooper claimed Monday that Bailey’s chambers “attempted to downplay this abuse” and violated the confidentiality obligation by announcing that they were under investigation. “Not only was the response tweet sent in breach of the obligation of confidentiality, but it was sent without even the kindness of a head-up by the heads of the chambers,” he said. In response, GCC attorney Andrew Hochhauser said any response from the chambers did not deter Bailey in her tweet.
