\n<\/p>\n
A nurse who objected to sharing a female changing room with a transgender woman doctor has been cleared of gross misconduct allegations.<\/p>\n
Sandie Peggie, who has worked as a nurse for the health board for more than 30 years, is claiming she was subject to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act when she was expected to share a changing room with a trans woman, Dr Beth Upton.<\/p>\n
Upton herself complained to the board about Peggie\u2019s behaviour after an altercation in the women\u2019s changing room in Victoria hospital, Kirkcaldy, Fife, in December 2023. Peggie was accused of misconduct, failures of patient care and misgendering Upton.<\/p>\n
But NHS Fife confirmed on Wednesday that an internal hearing had concluded there was \u201cinsufficient evidence to support a finding of misconduct\u201d.<\/p>\n
Peggie\u2019s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, described her client \u2013 who was suspended from work at Victoria hospital in January 2024 \u2013 as \u201crelieved and delighted\u201d at the outcome of the 18-month internal process.<\/p>\n
NHS Fife and Upton are defending their actions in an employment tribunal case against the trust that resumed on Wednesday after a five-month break.<\/p>\n
The tribunal hearing is being watched closely for how it may be influenced by April\u2019s landmark judgment by the supreme court that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 does not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates. The ruling has since been publicly welcomed by Peggie and her supporters.<\/p>\n
In earlier evidence, Peggie said she had felt \u201cembarrassed and intimidated\u201d when Upton started to get changed alongside her, leading to a heated exchange, the details of which are disputed.<\/p>\n
The health board has previously described Peggie\u2019s action as \u201cunnecessary and vexatious\u201d. Upton is also disputing it.<\/p>\n
NHS Fife\u2019s equality lead, Isla Bumba, told NHS Fife\u2019s counsel, Jane Russell KC, that in August 2023, her line manager, Esther Davidson, had asked for \u201cvery generic and informal\u201d advice on how best to accommodate a new trans member of staff, \u201cparticularly around changing rooms\u201d.<\/p>\n
The advice was based on the Equality and Human Rights Commissions\u2019s statutory code of practice, which is currently being revised to reflect the supreme court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
Bumba told the hearing: \u201cI said it could be deemed discriminatory to not allow a trans person access to facilities that aligned with their gender, but I recommended that it might be worthwhile having a conversation with the person directly if they had been open about their trans status to see where they would be most comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
She confirmed to Russell that she was not aware of any other cases of staff objecting to trans employees using changing facilities that aligned with their lived gender to date, and that no other female staff had approached her to say they felt their safety, privacy or dignity were being compromised.<\/p>\n
Bumba was later questioned by Peggie\u2019s lawyer, Naomi Cunningham, who asked whether the health board\u2019s approach to allowing Upton to use the women\u2019s facilities amounted to forcing female colleagues \u201cto participate in a pretence\u201d that Upton was a woman. \u201cI disagree,\u201d said Bumba firmly.<\/p>\n
She later denied that she wanted to \u201csee Sandie Peggie punished\u201d for her gender-critical views, telling Cunningham \u201cthat\u2019s quite a leap\u201d. Earlier she accepted that, while she believed that trans women were women, there were others who did not. \u201cI believe gender is a spectrum and people\u2019s views on gender will also be a spectrum\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the tribunal continues, the first minister, John Swinney, insisted that NHS Fife \u2013 which has spent at least \u00a3220,000 defending its actions \u2013 \u201chas my confidence and support\u201d, while Scottish Labour\u2019s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, called on NHS Fife to settle the tribunal case \u201cand brings this sorry saga to an end\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A nurse who objected to sharing a female changing room with a transgender woman doctor has been cleared of gross misconduct allegations. Sandie Peggie, who has worked as a nurse for the health board for more than 30 years, is claiming she was subject to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act when she was expected<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3215,4356,3952,4357,2314,4358,1834,4359,2481,570],"class_list":{"0":"post-11110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-changing","9":"tag-cleared","10":"tag-doctor","11":"tag-misconduct","12":"tag-nurse","13":"tag-room","14":"tag-row","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-trans","17":"tag-transgender"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}