Christian nurse sues UK's NHS for 'forcing racist ideology' on students
The nurse has raised over $24,000 for her legal battle with the NHS trust
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A Christian Nurse in the United Kingdom is suing the Portman Clinic in North London, part of The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, over claims it is forcing students to learn a racist ideology.
"They are forcing Critical Race Theory onto people - you're not allowed to disagree with it, or they will bully you for two years," 33-year-old forensic psychology student Amy Gallagher said last week, according to a report in the Telegraph.
Gallagher, who said she is in the second year of her two-year course, claims that she has been discriminated against on the basis of her Christian faith and race.
The issue started in October 2020, when Gallagher said the trust forced students to take part in a lecture entitled "whiteness - a problem of our time," which she said claimed that "the problem of racism is a problem of whiteness" and told students to confront "the reality of whiteness."
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Britain's Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS), Amanda Pritchard, speaks during a media briefing on the latest COVID-19 update, at Downing Street, central London. (TOM NICHOLSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"I'm bringing this legal case to protect my career, but it's also the in the courts," Gallgher said. "The NHS is forcing someone to adopt a racist ideology, and it needs to be stopped."
The student filed her complaint in January of last year, with the case escalating in March when an external speaker at the trust claimed to the Nursing and Midwifery Council that Gallagher could not work with "diverse populations" and had "inflicted race-based harm."
Gallagher has so far used crowdfunding to raise over £21,000, equal to over $24,000, on GoFundMe. She is represented in the case by the Bad Law Project, a group established to fight against "woke" ideology.
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Car parking signs are displayed at Manchester Royal Infirmary on April 14, 2022 in Manchester, England. Free parking in hospital car parks for NHS staff was introduced by the government in July 2020 during the pandemic but ended on March 31, 2022. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images / Getty Images)
"The ‘lack of belief’ draws attention to something that people are not talking about in the free speech world in the West, which I think is covered by the Equality Act under lack of belief, which is you have the right not to be forced to sign up a set of values or ideology with which you do not agree," said the organization's legal head Dr. Anna Loutfi.
Loutfi said that the case goes beyond censorship, arguing that NHS has tried to force Gallagher to represent views she does not espouse.
"It’s quite one thing to censor somebody for wanting to say things that people find objectionable or offensive, but it’s really another thing substantively to force somebody to articulate a view that they do not hold, as if they hold it," Loutfi said. "That is what has happened to Amy."
An even mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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A spokesperson for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust would not comment on the case to the Telegraph, arguing that it was an "ongoing legal case," but made clear the organization has made a "commitment to work to become an anti-racist organization."