{"id":202489,"date":"2020-02-15T07:20:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T07:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202489"},"modified":"2020-02-17T08:31:39","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T08:31:39","slug":"police-who-warned-man-about-transphobic-tweet-acted-unlawfully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202489","title":{"rendered":"Police who warned man about ‘transphobic’ tweet acted unlawfully"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandra Topping \u2013 The Guardian Feb 14, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Harry Miller stands outside the high court after being acquitted.<\/p><\/div>\n

Police officers unlawfully interfered with a man\u2019s right to freedom of expression by turning up at his place of work to speak to him about allegedly \u201ctransphobic\u201d tweets, the high court has ruled.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry Miller, a former police officer who founded the campaign group Fair Cop, said the actions of Humberside police had a \u201csubstantial chilling effect\u201d on his right to free speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miller, 54, from Lincolnshire, said an officer told him he had not committed a crime, but that his tweeting was being recorded as a \u201chate incident\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a strongly-worded judgement, Mr Justice Julian Knowles said the effect of police turning up at Miller\u2019s place of work \u201cbecause of his political opinions must not be underestimated\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIn this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But trans rights activists reacted with disappointment to parts of the judge\u2019s ruling. Helen Belcher, co-founder of Trans Media Watch, said trans people would fear \u201copen season\u201d on them as a result. She added: \u201cI think it will reinforce an opinion that courts don\u2019t understand trans lives and aren\u2019t there to protect trans people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowles rejected a wider challenge to the lawfulness of the College of Police guidance, ruling that it \u201cserves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate\u201d. The guidance defines a transgender hate incident as \u201cany 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\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the ruling, Miller called it \u201ca watershed moment for liberty\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tweets included: \u201cI was assigned Mammal at Birth, but my orientation is Fish. Don\u2019t mis species me.\u201d Miller also tweeted: \u201cTranswomen are women. Anyone know where this new biological classification was first proposed and adopted?\u201d. He later wrote that the statement was \u201cbollocks\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miller also retweeted a poem by someone else on Twitter<\/a> which appeared to be directed to a trans woman and used the term \u201cstupid man\u201d, making a derisive reference to a trans woman\u2019s genitalia.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the same day, Stephanie Hayden, a trans woman, has won her case<\/a><\/strong><\/span> against a woman who called her a \u201cpig in a wig\u201d and made multiple Twitter accounts to send her anti-trans messages. The court found Kate Scottow guilty of persistently making use of a public communications network to cause annoyance\/inconvenience and anxiety at St Albans magistrates court.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Miller case, the judge ruled that there was no evidence Miller\u2019s tweets \u201cwere \u2018designed\u2019 to cause deep offence\u201d, adding that: \u201cThe tweets were not directed at the transgender community. They were primarily directed at the claimant\u2019s Twitter followers.\u201d The tweets were lawful and there was not \u201cthe slightest risk\u201d that he would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet, he ruled.<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowles stressed \u201cthe vital importance of free speech\u201d, saying it included \u201cnot only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his judgment, Knowles said: \u201cI conclude that the police\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The judge also emphasised he was not \u201cconcerned with the merits of the transgender debate\u201d, adding \u201c[t]he issues are obviously complex\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Case against a former policeman who sent allegedly \u201ctransphobic tweets\u201d is dismissed. As judge warns the case had a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on free speech<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202498,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202489\/revisions\/202498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}