An evangelical Christian has lost a second employment tribunal case after claiming he was discriminated against when a job centre refused to remove LGBT-related imagery from a workplace.
In 2024, Mark Jennings was offered a role as a work coach in Canterbury, Kent, but said he should not be exposed to Pride or LGBT symbols and requested they be removed before he accepted the job.
He then launched legal action, claiming that his religious beliefs had been discriminated against and that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had failed to make adjustments to accommodate him.
Now, Judge Daniel Wright has published his findings. He began by setting out Jennings’ position: “Jennings requested that no one in the Canterbury office of the job centre, the centre to which he had been assigned, should promote the use of different pronouns, and that no visible imagery of the Pride or LGBTQ+ movements be displayed or celebration of those causes be permitted,” he wrote.
Jennings also explained that as "a Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian, his faith dictated that gender ideology was the work of the Devil, and the promotion of trans ideology caused him great anxiety", adding the LGBT iconography caused him "distress" due to his mental health conditions.
In response to his requests, the tribunal heard that the workplace would not display Pride symbols in his part of the office. However, this proposal was not enough for Jennings.
Judge Wright said: “He told us that he is a baptised member of the Roman Catholic Church, attending mass and confession, but he also attends two evangelical churches, meaning on a normal Sunday, he attends three churches.
“From his evidence, it is clear that the claimant subscribes to what may be referred to as a conservative or orthodox interpretation of the Christian faith.
“It is his view, in line with many others within the faith, that homosexuality and transgenderism is a sin contrary to the laws of God, and that a Christian should not promote LGBTQ+ activities."
The tribunal also found that Jennings’s request to work from home was unreasonable as his job description required him to carry out face-to-face interviews with job seekers.
The tribunal ruled his demands were unreasonable, with the judge saying removing Pride symbols could expose the employer to harassment claims.
The case has been dismissed.
This is the second time Jennings has argued that pride iconography affects his mental health. In a previous lawsuit, he launched legal action against NatWest after claiming a rainbow display in one of their banks had triggered his “phobia of Pride-related paraphernalia”.
Sheriff Principal Nigel Ross found that Jennings had used ChatGPT to write his legal arguments as he was representing himself, throwing out his case as a result and has ordered him to pay costs.
