An employment tribunal in England has dismissed a discrimination case brought by a Christian man who asked his prospective employer to remove all Pride symbols from the workplace and to bar colleagues from using pronoun identifiers before he commenced his role.
Mark Jennings applied for a job as an employment coach at a Job Centre run by Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions. After he was offered the position in November 2023, Jennings requested that the centre introduce new workplace rules to accommodate his beliefs.
The department said it could not meet his request to avoid exposure to Pride imagery or hearing colleagues discuss or display pronoun identifiers at work. It also refused to offer the role on a work-from-home basis, noting the position required in-person appointments with clients at the Job Centre. Jennings declined the job offer and later lodged a discrimination claim against the department.
An Employment Tribunal heard that Jennings is a devout Roman Catholic and Evangelical Christian who attends up to three different churches each Sunday.
Jennings told the tribunal that his religious beliefs caused him extreme anxiety when exposed to what he described as “trans ideology,” and that seeing Pride rainbows could trigger an autistic shutdown. He argued the employer could have taken reasonable steps to accommodate him by designating office areas free of Pride iconography and restricting staff from displaying or using pronoun identifiers.
Judge Daniel Wright rejected those arguments, finding that implementing Jennings’ requests would likely have infringed on the rights of existing employees. The tribunal also heard that Jennings has previously brought similar claims against other organisations that declined to make comparable accommodations.
