A group of eight female nurses has won a significant employment tribunal case against their NHS trust, after a judge ruled that allowing a transgender colleague to use their single-sex changing facilities subjected them to harassment and violated their dignity.
Hostile and Intimidating Environment Created
The nurses, all employed at Darlington Memorial Hospital, brought a claim against the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. The case centred on their objections to sharing the women's changing room with a colleague, Rose Henderson, a trans woman.
In a judgment delivered on Friday, Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney found the trust's actions had created "a hostile, intimidating, humiliating and degrading environment" for the claimants. The ruling stated the trust subjected the nurses to harassment related to both sex and gender reassignment by permitting the situation and failing to provide suitable alternative facilities for those who objected.
Trust's Response Deemed Harassment
The tribunal heard that when the nurses raised their concerns, the trust's response itself constituted further harassment. Judge Sweeney highlighted that this included suggestions "the claimants needed to be educated on trans rights and to broaden their mindsets." The later provision of alternative changing arrangements was also judged to be inadequate.
During proceedings in Newcastle, the nurses gave evidence that included allegations Ms Henderson had stared at them, with one nurse saying she was asked three times if she was going to get changed. Ms Henderson, in her testimony, said she was not the person the claimants had portrayed and described the public fallout from the case as "upsetting."
Broader Rulings on Discrimination and Rights
The tribunal panel made several further important findings. It upheld a complaint of indirect sex discrimination, agreeing that women are more likely than men to suffer fear or humiliation if required to change in front of a member of the opposite biological sex.
Additionally, the trust was found to have breached health and safety regulations and, crucially, to have infringed the claimants' right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Following the judgment, Bethany Hutchison, the nurse who led the claim backed by the Christian Legal Centre, said: "This is a victory for common sense and for every woman who simply wants to feel safe at work." The case sets a notable precedent in the ongoing national debate balancing transgender inclusion with the protections for single-sex spaces.
