Gender-critical NUFC fan launches legal action against club and police

A Newcastle United fan banned from club matches and subjected to a police investigation for her gender-critical views is to take legal action.

Linzi Smith is challenging Newcastle United Football Club’s decision to revoke her membership and impose a two-season match ban over her public statements defending biological reality.

She is also pursuing a judicial review against Northumbria Police for openly supporting “trans causes”. Last year the force investigated her social media posts for “malicious communications”, one of which stated “trans women are men”.

Gender ideology

Smith, who is backed by the Free Speech Union, told The Daily Telegraph: “I’ve been made to look like a criminal. I can’t even go looking for a new job at the minute because I’m frightened of how I might be perceived.”

She added: “This has all happened purely because I hold views that other people don’t agree with.”

Outlining the reasons for launching a judicial review, her solicitor Paul Conrathe said: “By marching at Pride, wearing rainbow lanyards and driving rainbow painted police cars the police have plainly breached their statutory duty of impartiality.”

Such actions, he added, represented support “for highly controversial and contested gender ideology – the belief that a person can have a gender that is different to their biological sex”.

‘Heresy hunt’

Last month, a woman who resigned from Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre following a “heresy hunt” over her gender-critical beliefs was vindicated by an Employment Tribunal.

Support worker Roz Adams was subjected to a misconduct investigation, after asking on behalf of a domestic abuse victim if a non-binary staff member was a “man or a woman” because the client felt “uncomfortable talking to a man”.

Employment Judge Ian McFatridge found that senior management used the disciplinary process to “make an example” of Adams because she did not “fully subscribe” to gender ideology.