On the morning of Monday, 29th July, lawyers were preparing to question witnesses for Cambridge County Council (CCC) about the harm caused by the misgendering of a dachshund during a workplace meeting. The dog owner, a social worker, claimed he had been shaken by the incident — left crying, and struggling to sleep. This and other disagreements during staff LGBTQ+ sessions led to social worker Liz Pitt being investigated for transphobia.

The subsequent hearing was set to determine whether CCC had discriminated against Pitt, who describes herself as “a lesbian who believes that sex is real,” over her expression of gender-critical beliefs. However, just thirty minutes before the employment tribunal was due to commence, the council backed out.

CCC admitted liability, agreeing to pay compensation to Pitt and promising to roll out new training on freedom of belief in the workplace. This case is the latest addition to the growing list of employers who have discriminated against employees for not toeing the trans activist line.

The details are as comic as they are cautionary. Documents prepared for the hearing reveal the dangers of allowing a clique of sanctimonious zealots to set policy for an entire organisation.

Following an acrimonious exchange during a workplace LGBTQ+ network meeting, Pitt was investigated by human resources. She was told that she had “demonstrated behaviours which were non-inclusive and perceived as transphobic” and was suspended from the network.

Accusations were quickly collected from attendees at the meeting. These included that Pitt and a more junior colleague she managed (who has since left CCC) had shared hateful views, including “that all pregnant people are women.” Pitt was also criticised for arguing “that using the pronoun ‘they’ to refer to one person was silly as it wasn’t grammatically correct.”

This latter point particularly upset the communications and marketing officer, who wrote in an email following the meeting:

I shut down and sat there silently, unable to respond to any of the rhetoric. I was shaking in disbelief, waiting for the meeting to finish – traumatised.

Meanwhile, the social worker, whose own views on his dog’s identity might be politely described as barking, questioned whether someone with Pitt’s opinions could be trusted to do her job, explaining:

I am wondering how she is advising in supervision regarding LGBTQIA+ service users. We know that in Social Care we work with vulnerable young people, families, and adults. What are the pieces of advice given to LGBTQIA+ service users? I am wondering if this symbolic violence is being extended in practices in supervision.

Eventually, the complaints reached the council CEO, Stephen Moir. He told the entire organisation in a recorded address that trans members of staff had been subjected to abuse, discrimination, and harassment. He added he would not tolerate such behaviour and that within CCC there was “no LGB without the T.”

It was a few months later, in November 2023, that Pitt launched the legal action.

The threat of a tribunal appeared not to deter CCC management. The service director for human resources wrote in her witness statement for the court that Pitt and her colleague who had spoken during the meeting had “been oppressive in their assertions that biological sex was scientifically fixed and there were two genders and therefore talk of other views was not credible.” She also complained that Pitt was not prepared to prioritise the “lived experience” of her colleagues and that she instead “focused on reciting facts and scientific data, including statistics about gender minorities.”

Sadly, the eleventh-hour settlement robbed the public of what would no doubt have been an entertaining trial, and one to which their taxes will have contributed. But the details from this tribunal-that-never-was deserve to be aired and the lessons must be learned.

Workplace identity groups were established as spaces where people could share their experiences of belonging to a minority group. Perhaps once they served a useful function. But since the passing of equalities legislation, it has become unlawful to pay someone less or treat them less favourably because of the colour of their skin, disability, or who they fancy.

As such, today, groups like CCC’s LGBTQ+ network pull in the petty, the prescriptive, and the pious. Employees are no longer drawn together because of shared characteristics but by shared beliefs about identity politics.

When employers cede responsibility for policy to those deemed to be marginalised purely because of their protected characteristics, whole organisations are left vulnerable to the whims of fanatics. Divisive ideas about gender identity or race are then written into policy and performed in practice. Fighting this bigotry and breaking through suffocating groupthink has been left to brave individuals like Liz Pitt.

The cost of failing to challenge pernicious ideologies is not only felt by renegade employees, or indeed taxpayers, but also by those downstream of the ideas that fester within workplace identity networks. In Pitt’s case, this means the vulnerable adults and children cared for by social services.

Deferring to workplace identity groups is a reckless dereliction of duty by our institutions which must not continue. It’s time for us all to point out the dachshund’s bollocks and bite back.