A former math teacher in England lost his job for calling a trans boy in his class a girl. Now he’s backed by a Christian legal group, and is going to sue his old employers at a state secondary school in Oxfordshire.
‘I regret that our relations have reached this point, but I feel I have no choice but to bring legal proceedings against you without further notice,” wrote 27-year-old Joshua Sutcliffe in the letter to the school, obtained by Metro.
He called the school’s policy on the matter “totalitarian.”
The Christian Legal Centre, a group working out of England, is supporting him. They said Sutcliffe didn’t mean to be disrespectful when addressing the trans student and a second student, a girl.
“The child had self-declared as ‘male’, but Mr Sutcliffe, who had been given no formal instruction on how he was to refer to the pupil, said ‘well done girls’ in her [sic.] presence,” said the Christian Legal Centre in a statement.
Sutcliffe later lost his job for “misgendering” the student.
He and the group said he had no ill will in calling the trans boy a girl, even though they said it conflicts with his religious beliefs. (He is also a pastor at a church.) Sutcliffe continued to describe the student with female pronouns in a November interview with English daytime show This Morning, but he called the incident “a slip of the tongue.”
The school declined to comment about the lawsuit to The Daily Mail, citing the confidentiality of disciplinary matters.
[Screengrab via This Morning]
