Judge rules trans tweets freedom of expression

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Police officers unlawfully interfered with a man’s right to freedom of expression by turning up at his place of work to speak to him about allegedly “transphobic” tweets, the high court has ruled. Harry Miller, a former police officer who founded the campaign group Fair Cop Police officers unlawfully interfered with a man’s right to freedom of expression by turning up at his place of work to speak to him about allegedly “transphobic” tweets, the high court has ruled.

Harry Miller, a former police officer who founded the campaign group Fair Cop, said the actions of Humberside police had a “substantial chilling effect” on his right to free speech.

Miller, 54, from Lincolnshire, said an officer told him he had not committed a crime, but that his tweeting was being recorded as a “hate incident”.

In a strongly-worded judgement, Mr Justice Julian Knowles said the effect of police turning up at Miller’s place of work “because of his political opinions must not be underestimated”.

He said: “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society,” he said.

But trans rights activists reacted with disappointment to parts of the judge’s ruling. Helen Belcher, co-founder of Trans Media Watch, said trans people would fear “open season” on them as a result. She added: “I think it will reinforce an opinion that courts don’t understand trans lives and aren’t there to protect trans .

The guidance defines a transgender hate incident as “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender”.

Miller posted a number of tweets between November 2018 and January 2019 which he said formed part of the debate about proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

The tweets included: “I was assigned Mammal at Birth, but my orientation is Fish. Don’t mis species me.” Miller also tweeted: “Transwomen are women. Anyone know where this new biological classification was first proposed and adopted?”. He later wrote that the statement was “bollocks”.

Miller also retweeted a poem by someone else on Twitter which appeared to be directed to a trans woman and used the term “stupid man”, making a derisive reference to a trans woman’s genitalia.

In the Miller case, the judge ruled that there was no evidence Miller’s tweets “were ‘designed’ to cause deep offence”, adding that: “The tweets were not directed at the transgender community. They were primarily directed at the claimant’s Twitter followers.” The tweets were lawful and there was not “the slightest risk” that he would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet, he ruled.

Knowles stressed “the vital importance of free speech”, saying it included “not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative”.

In his judgment, Knowles said: “I conclude that the police’s actions led him, reasonably, to believe that he was being warned not to exercise his right to freedom of expression about transgender issues on pain of potential criminal prosecution.”

The judge also emphasised he was not “concerned with the merits of the transgender debate”, adding “[t]he issues are obviously complex”.

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He added: “Our guidance is about protecting people because of who they are and we know this is an area where people may be reluctant to report things to us.”