A nurse who complained about sharing a women’s changing room with a transgender doctor has won part of her employment tribunal against NHS Fife but her claim against the doctor in question was dismissed.
Sandie Peggie, who has worked as a nurse for more than 30 years, contended she was subject to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act when she was expected to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton.
In a written judgment on Monday, the tribunal upheld Peggie’s harassment claim against the health board but dismissed other claims. It also dismissed the nurse’s claim against Upton, whose evidence was held to be “more reliable and materially more cohesive in nature”.
The judgment was immediately attacked by gender-critical campaigners as “disappointing” for failing to provide employers with clarity on the practical application of April’s supreme court ruling on biological sex.
The case revolved around a disputed incident which took place in a changing room at Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve 2023, after which Upton made an allegation of bullying and harassment and cited concerns about patient care, leading to Peggie being placed on special leave.
Peggie lodged a claim against both Upton and NHS Fife, citing the Equality Act 2010, including sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation.
The employment tribunal in Dundee heard two tranches of evidence in February and July, before Judge Sandy Kemp.
In an interim statement, Peggie said she was “beyond relieved and delighted” at the harassment finding, adding that “the last two years have been agonising for me and my family”. She is expected to make a more detailed response later this week.
The 312-page ruling found that NHS Fife had harassed Peggie by not revoking Upton’s permission to use the women’s changing room on an interim basis after her initial complaint until different work rotas for the pair could take effect.
It also found the board took an “unreasonable” length of time to investigate the patient care allegations, that she had walked out on a patient in order to avoid Dr Upton. Although they emerged in January 2024, it was not until July 2025 that NHS Fife confirmed Peggie had been cleared of the separate gross misconduct allegations after an 18-month internal process.
The ruling questioned the credibility of some of Peggie’s evidence such as seeking to distance herself from offensive remarks about Pakistan flood victims, but also dismissed other attacks on her professional performance, describing her “unblemished 30-year career until the Christmas Eve incident”.
Addressing comments Peggie made to Upton during the Christmas Eve incident using language she “knew, or ought reasonably to have known, would be offensive”, the judgment concluded that “transphobic” was not a term of law and accepted as “entirely genuine” the nurse’s concern “that a person she regarded as male was entering a space she regarded as one that was private for those who were biologically female”.
A hearing to determine what legal remedy is due Peggie will be fixed for a later date.
The case has been followed closely across the UK to see how April’s supreme court ruling that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex.
Kemp argued in his judgment that the supreme court ruling was “not determinative” for changing room use. “It may be lawful to grant permission to a trans person to use the changing room that aligns with the sex and gender they identify as having, dependent on the circumstances.”
He concluded that that decision did not result in it being inherently unlawful for a trans female, who is biologically male under the Equality Act, to be given permission to use a female changing room at work. Conversely, having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment did not mean that permission to use the changing room was necessarily lawful.
Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, described the tribunal’s finding as “a huge win for a tenacious and courageous woman standing up for her sex-based rights”.
But Maya Forstater, the head of the sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said that “overall we are disappointed in the tribunal’s approach, which sought to reach a spurious ‘balance’ between a woman’s right to undress with privacy and dignity and the right of an employee with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment not to be discriminated against in employment.
“The case demonstrates that employers with ambiguous policies are putting themselves in legal jeopardy. But the tribunal has failed to provide them with the clarity they need in order to be confident that they can simply and clearly say ‘No’ to men who want to use women’s spaces.”
Susan Smith, a co-director of the campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought the case against the Scottish government that resulted in the supreme court ruling, said: “Tribunal courts should not be trying to overwrite the judgment of the highest court in the UK.
NHS Fife, which has been criticised for spending at least £220,500 defending the case, said it would take time to work through the detail of the judgment.
“We want to recognise how difficult this tribunal has been for everyone directly and indirectly involved. Our focus now is to ensure that NHS Fife remains a supportive and inclusive environment for all employees and our patients and to deliver health and care to the population of Fife,” it said.
The ruling comes a week after a female employee who objected to trans women using the female toilets at Leonardo UK’s office in Edinburgh lost her discrimination claim against the firm. An employment tribunal ruled the toilet policy was a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” to create an inclusive workplace environment for trans staff.
Jess O’Thomson, the trans rights lead for the non-profit Good Law Project, said both rulings countered the argument that the supreme court ruling automatically resulted in a bathroom ban for trans people. “The tribunal was clear that the law does not now require banning trans people from single-sex spaces.”
