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On 29 April, the High Court ruled in favor of the University of Sussex’ (UoS) appeal to overturn a record £585,000 fine from the Office for Students (OfS). This came following a free speech regulation claim from transphobic ex-philosophy professor Kathleen Stock.
Justice Lieven found that the supposed ‘watchdog’ had approached its investigation with a closed mind. She also found that the organisation had no authority to make parts of its decision. Tellingly, the ruling also highlighted the extent of the “relationship” between Stock and the ‘free speech’ chief of the OfS.
‘Significant and serious breaches’
Stock described trans women as “males with male genitalia”, and was a signatory to the Women’s Human Rights Declaration, which has called for the “elimination” of “the practice of transgenderism”. She also called for the government to protect the harmful practice of conversion therapy when applied to trans children.
In reaction to her bigoted views, she faced waves of protests from student groups, and claimed that she had received death threats. The OfS launched an investigation into UoS after Stock voluntarily resigned from her post in 2021.
The OfS directed its ire at the university’s trans and non-binary equality policy statement. This placed relatively simple demands on course materials to:
positively represent trans people.
It also stated that:
transphobic propaganda … will not be tolerated.
Note, this places no restriction on Stock’s brand of ‘sex not gender’ transphobia. It merely requires academics not to present bigoted views about a minority group.
In March 2025, Arif Ahmed – OfS freedom of speech and academic freedom director – ruled that:
These are significant and serious breaches of the OfS’s requirements. Substantial monetary penalties are appropriate for the scale of wrongdoing we have found. However, we have significantly discounted the monetary penalties we initially calculated on this occasion to reflect that this is the first case of its type we have dealt with.
The watchdog’s “significantly discounted” penalty totaled a record £585,000 fine.
‘Comprehensive vindication’
However, following yesterday’s High Court ruling, that fine has now been thrown out. In a press statement, UoS vice-chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil said:
The University has always maintained that the OfS adopted an erroneous and absolutist approach to freedom of speech, that it deliberately ignored comprehensive protections of academic freedom and freedom of speech at Sussex, and that it prosecuted its torturous three-and-a-half-year long investigation with a ‘closed mind’.
The Court’s judgment is a comprehensive vindication of that position. It is a devastating indictment of the impartiality and competence of the OfS, implicating its operations, leadership, governance, and strategy. It raises important and urgent questions for the government as it plans to grant ever more powers to the regulator.
The High Court found that the OfS erred in law in respect of its jurisdiction, in its interpretation of the law, and its understanding of freedom of speech and academic freedom, and that its process was fatally flawed by bias in the form of predetermination.
During its investigation, the OfS interviewed Stock, but refused requests for in-person meetings from other university staff.
Likewise, the judgement also highlighted the extent of the pre-existing relationship between Stock and Ahmed. The court found that the two had exchanged emails extensively in 2020. This was, of course, long before Stock’s resignation or the UoS inquiry.
The correspondence included criticism of the UoS inclusion document, talk of a ‘free speech’ campaign, and a request for “real feminist” contacts. Ahmed also characterised non-binary academic Professor Quill
Kukla as a “lunatic”, to which Stock replied:
You have a point about Kukla, lol.
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